Casablancas Kryptonite
by BIFF1
Summary: "You just don't get it. She's like kryptonite or something." Dick looked at his brother and thought about those blue eyes that cut and the way her mouth twisted around insults. Yeah maybe she was kyptonite. Casablancas kyptonite because isn't he just as weak. A Series of little chapters on the evolving relationship of Mac and Dick from Dicks POV. rated for Dick's potty mouth.
1. kryptonite

**Casablancas Kryptonite**

* * *

She sat on the couch opposite him and her eyes just cut right through him.

He looked around the room wondering where the hell Beaver had gotten to this time. He had a habit of leaving his girlfriend around the house. He had to admit he was impressed with little Ghostworld. In the big bad Casa de Casablancas without her Cassidy security blanket. She sat there with a straight back and eyes that could have cut glass.

Dad would have liked her.

How could he not, the girl was all guts and brains and too sharp tongue. She was the best of his sons smashed into a cute unassuming package that could hack her way into and out of pretty much anything (according to Beav anyway, he'd have a dark look in his eyes like he thought it was the hottest thing, which honestly he didn't really get.)

Her collar was blue, she was the wrong side of the tracks, she was 02. She shouldn't have felt comfortable here, in one of the largest houses in the 09. Although she didn't look comfortable really, it wasn't that, it was something else, like she was judging it and finding it lacking.

Yeah, Dad would have loved her. He'd married at least three women who had yet to master what Mac had down at seventeen. Maybe it was good he was out of the picture, he didn't think he could stomach his father hitting on her.

She was looking right through him and it chilled and burned all at once that she could do that to him. Like she was looking at him and he just wasn't good enough, like he was the inferior brother. He clenched his teeth and focused hard on her gaze, locking it.

How had this even happened, she hadn't even existed for years. She'd just melted into the background, in her own little computer world, she should feel nervous and awkward and wrong here, cower and blush and fret under his gaze.

He was the better brother, the whole fucking world knew it but she disagreed so violently with the idea without saying a word, it was all eyes and jaw and straight backed movements and he hated every inch of her for it.

Wanted to throw her down and prove just how much better he was than the younger. To have her scream his name instead.

_Dick!_

Her whole body changed, it softened and warmed and welcomed and he knew without looking that Beaver had appeared behind him, Those things where never there for him, no with him her body was an icy disapproving hard thing, untouchable, painful, she used her whole body as a weapon against him.

_bitch._

Her short shorts and band t-shirts and chucks, the chunks of colour in her hair, he was sure were entirely because that was what she wanted, not what she thought Beav would want, which gave her a strange kind of confidence that was surely the draw to her. She made no sense, that's not what girls were supposed to be like.

She stood from the couch and pulled once at the shorts to get them to settle back in place, she smiled brightly behind him and walked passed him, out of the room.

The sound of Beaver and Mac echoing around in the near empty house.

Her laughter bouncing around in his chest painfully like a bullet.


	2. drunk text

**Drunk text**

* * *

He just didn't get it.

It was obvious that Beaver was crazy for the little nerd.

She was basically throwing herself at him any chance she'd get, and Cass seemed totally into it until a certain point. Like he was one of those stupid bitches who wanted to *save themselves* or some shit. Like he wanted it to be special or some shit.

_Newsflash Beav, it's never special it will be awkward and too short and it'll hurt her._

Adopted for sure.

Either way Beaver was on his eighth beer and he was positive that Beav had never gone past three before.

Just chilling out in the yard with Logan and him talking about the stupid too smart bitch. _Why couldn't she just be happy with things the way they were?_

Seriously adopted.

He would have fucked her and forgotten her name by now. Although the way wasted Beaver was talking about her maybe he would have allowed for repeat business.

All soft hot curves and the thing she did with her tongue...

Beaver had gotten a glazed look and trailed off.

A look at Logan and it was positive that they were both of the opinion that they'd be back together by the end of the week.

Beaver threw the half full bottle and watched it smash and shatter across the pool tile his mouth that firm line of anger.

_Fuck her_

Beaver had yelled turning on his heel and disappearing into the kitchen to grab another beer.

He leaned over to Logan and laughed

_Wasn't that the problem?_

_Yeah from what Veronica says..._

Beaver came back with a bottle of jack in one hand and his cell phone in the other.

_what are you doing Beav?_

Beaver had looked up at him with wild drunk eyes and basically spat at Dick, _My name is Cassidy you asshat!_

Dick stood up and grabbed the phone from Beaver, it was outrageously easy as he was a practised drunk and this was Cass' first foray into actual drunkenness.

He looked down at the phone and saw Mac's contact information. He went quickly into history and found the text to Ghostworld.

_You drunk texting little bitch._

Logan was laughing behind him and Cassidy drove a fist into his stomach and snatched the phone as Dick doubled over. Logan sounded like he was going to stop breathing.

_If she's such a bitch and you dumped her why are you sending her messages?_

_you just don't get it. She's like kryptonite or something._

Dick looked at his brother and thought about those blue eyes that cut and the way her mouth twisted around insults. Yeah maybe she was kyptonite.

Casablancas kyptonite because isn't he just as weak.


	3. fire

**Fire**

* * *

He heard the news and wondered how pissed Beaver was.

Mac going to prom with some little shit junior.

Butters

Talk about downgrading.

He'd gotten home after him, Beavers car parked at a weird angle like he couldn't get out of it fast enough.

There was an odd smell, something burning and he followed the smell out to the backyard.

The pool was on fucking fire.

He'd set the pool alight just like he'd done with the community pool. He stood there at the edge off it, probably too close and was staring into the weird unnatural flames.

It was an unsettling sight, water on fire.

_I'll kill him if he touches her_

Beaver said with such an icy conviction that Dick's blood ran cold and for once he actually believed that Beaver would could hurt someone (other than him).

He threw a deck chair into the flaming pool and Dick had to pull him back from the thing.

Forcing him to look at him.

_Dude, calm down. She probably lost a bet or something._

There was no other way he could think of that Ghostworld would agree to go with anyone other than Cass. The entire school knew that she was stuck on his little brother. Which worked out he figured since his brother was still totally stuck on her.

If he'd just get over whatever the fuck was the problem and talk to her he knew, as did all the rest of the 09ers, that they'd be back together quicker than Madison could max a platinum card.

_Look, I'll make sure he doesn't touch her...okay?_

Cassidy seemed to be appeased.


	4. reunion

**Reunion**

* * *

He didn't know why Beaver could be in such a good mood. His car had been keyed and he'd had to tutor Weevil.

But Cass was in the best mood he'd been in since he'd cut ties with Ghostworld because he hadn't heard Cass laugh like that since. A joyful thing rather than cruel.

He followed the laughter up the stairs to see what had finally pulled Beaver out of his funk. If maybe he'd finally detoxed from Mac's kyptonite.

He turned the corner and stopped dead. Mac's laughter overlapped his brothers.

_two words...pirate ship_

Mac laughs, her laughter was self depricating and he could see the pair of them on Beavers bed, Beav on his stomach his arm draped possessively across her middle. Her body relaxed, she had a hand in his hair and even he could see the swollen state of her lips from the hall.

Seems they had wasted no time in getting reacquainted and it tightened something in Dick that he wasn't a fan of.

_you have to say more than pirate ship. Come on. He didn't try anything with you right?_

Beav's voice gets dark which is ridiculous because he had had dinner on a fucking pirate ship to make sure Butters kept his freak hands to himself and he knows that.

_no. It was weird, after a while it was like he was afraid to even stand too close to me._

He watches her shrug and Beaver relaxes. His hand running down Ghost worlds pale leg. She giggles, something he didn't think her sarcastic little mouth was even capable of.

He feels dirty watching his brother make up with his girlfriend but its like his legs are frozen. Watches glued as Beaver's fingers run slowly back up her leg and disappear under her shorts.

A breathy little noise escapes her and Dick is pushed into action. He pushes away from the corner of the wall and stops in Beaver's doorway. Beaver has his mouth on her neck but Ghostworld see's him and he watches her stiffen and grab onto Cassidy's shirt.

"So you too made up then? How sweet."

"Get out of here Dick." Cassidy tells him with a sigh and pushes up on the bed to glare at him. There's something dark in his eyes that's not all lust like it should be.

Mac pushes herself up off the bed and walks over to the door. The ice in her is melted but he finds the fire in her isn't much better. She stands in front of him silently for a moment, too strong, too confident for a girl with her shirt half buttoned and her hair a mess.

She closes the door on him and he watches the doorknob as the lock clicks into place.

_you're great_ Cassidy tells her his voice close. He's moved to her.

_you're pretty gre-_

The words are cut off and the door groans at the pressure of Mac being pushed up against it by his brother.

He leans against the door for a moment and wonders what the_ fuck_ he's doing.


	5. welcome wagon

**Welcome Wagon**

* * *

When her eyes had locked with his it was like she was stabbing him.

It was the first he'd seen of her since the funeral months ago. Sitting across the street, like he wouldn't know it was her stupid car, like he hadn't seen it in his own god damn driveway a million times. She had been in funeral black and just flopped over her steering wheel her body shaking with what he knew were sobs.

She hadn't even made it through the gates.

She'd lost everything that had been appealing about her.

She wasn't that sharp, icy, confident untouchable thing any more nor the fiery demon Beaver turned her into.

She was broken.

A fucking mirror.

And he found he still hated every inch of her for being her in a way that even_ he_ realised was irrational.

But god he wanted to smash her. Just fucking _destroy_ her.

She looked like she'd just fucking fall apart and_ god_ he wanted her to.

To just break what was left of her.

She stood there, grip on the door knob white knuckle tight, straight as ever but it was wrong this time.

This time he could see through her not the other way around.

And it was a mess.

"My brother never cared about you, you know. You were just his beard"

He spit out the words at her and they hit her like a fist and he stood there with the haze of alcohol over the scene watching her break just a little bit more.

Who was the better brother now bitch.

He didn't want to throw her down and have her scream his name any more, he just wanted her _wrecked._

He was tempted to push his way in and lay into her, just yell and scream, how couldn't she tell! How hadn't she known! She was supposed to be smart! She had been dating a monster. She had loved a monster! He had loved a_ monster_... he had _made_ a monster...

He wanted her broken and stained, but he could tell in the way she stood in the doorway and watched him go that she was already.

That the stain of Cassidy would never wash off her.

She'd be Cassidy's forever and there wasn't a thing anyone could do about it.

_stupid bitch_


	6. raper prevention

**Raper prevention**

* * *

The raper had been in her room.

He was kind of freaking out and he didn't know why.

Why the fuck should he care.

Let the raper have his god damn way with Ghostworld's pale creamy skin..._fuck!_

He had had a thankfully silent panic attack when he'd found out that the raper had been in her room. Could he still get in her room? Would he come back to make a clean sweep of the dorm? Like some sort of fucked up Rape Bingo?!

And the entire campus was under the impression that his frat was the origin, which meant that one of his brothers...

Which was such bullshit...

but still.

He did the only thing he could without actually talking to her or to Logan or Ronnie about her.

He claimed her as a conquest, he had some of her stuff from Beaver still to back his claim. He took the hot nerd points, virgin points and a bonus for siblings ex and let the frat think what they want.

She was tainted to the frat now too, half the points...less then half since they wouldn't get points for banging his dead brothers girlfriend or virgin points.

They had considered taking off some points for the grief/comfort thing until the council had seen Mac interact with Dick.

The icy glare that went right through him.

Bandit had talked about awarding another point for hot enemy sex. Which he unfortunately didn't get (which was too bad but Mac was his highest score anyway so whatever)

It had convinced the council but it couldn't convince him that she was the same as before. She was broken and stained and he saw right through her _everything is normal act._

Right into the broken core of her. She was shattered and smeared with Cassidy's fingerprints.

He wanted nothing to do with her...

But his eyes kept following her through campus anyway, glaring at any guy that looked at her too long.


	7. brawl

**Brawl**

* * *

He heard she had a boyfriend, an unfortunate side effect of living with Logan while he was with Ronnie he kept over hearing things about her.

Logan was worried about her in a way that burned him somehow.

She didn't deserve the attention.

And now she was dating the head of the Hearst save the fluffy bunnies society or some bullshit.

Him being at the stupid vegetarian booth had nothing to do with the fact that this guy was dating Mac. He had to be there for the philanthro-whatever bullshit requirement for the frat house.

The guy was older than him, a junior according to Chip. He was a walking philan-bullshit advertisement. He wasn't terrible looking, and he could tell by the structure of his sentences that he was smart.

He sounded like Beaver and it chilled his blood.

Mac had gone out and found herself a Beaver replacement.

And there he was in arms reach.

The guy who'd like her and want her and make her feel like she wasn't the problem.

That would touch her the way Cass had and heat her skin and erase the bad bad feelings Cassidy had left on her.

He hated this guy.

She didn't deserve closure.

If he couldn't have it neither could she.

He put his fist into that assholes mouth and a brawl erupted in the hall, his new brothers taking up the cause without a moments hesitation.

They hadn't been on probation in a while and the stupid event was the most boring thing he'd ever been too.

As he sat in the Dean's office he hoped that that animal rescuing _Beaver light_ would tell her that he'd been punched by a blonde frat boy.

She'd know who it was.

Let her come at him.

He looked forward to another chance at breaking her.

* * *

A/N: it's my birthday!


	8. confrontation

**Confrontation **

* * *

She shows up at the suite when Logan's out somewhere. Probably with Ronnie, or slightly behind her or whatever.

He smirks when he sees her in the door frame.

He's been waiting for her to show up.

He's totally prepared to rip into her, ready to bring her back into the dark with him, to undo any good that glass jaw mother fucker has done.

She puts a hand on his chest and shocked he looks down at the contact. He's positive this is the first time she's ever actually touched him. There's a thin layer of cotton between her hand and him but it doesn't feel like that at all and he's having trouble breathing.

Her fingers curl into a fist and she tugs pulling him down.

Is she going to kiss him?

No that's stupid. But her eyes are burning with that same fire she had back when it was her and Cass and everything was good.

It's all raw power and even thou he can still see just how broken she is still she seems stronger. Determined.

He can't stop looking at her mouth, its a firm angry determined line which must be why he doesn't see it coming.

Her fist slamming right into his face with a surprising force.

She let's go of his shirt and he stumbles back a little bit.

"You were supposed to protect him." She hisses and storms back toward the elevator and he's frozen.

He sinks to the floor and slams the door closed with his foot. It wasn't the confrontation he wanted. He wanted her to yell and scream at him about beating up her shiny new boyfriend not to wreck him with a sentence.

It was payback for his words at her door months ago.

Her touch had been electric but it had felt like a betrayal and her words had hurt more than her surprisingly solid right hook.

She was right.

He was supposed to protect him. Dad and_ the bitch (pick a 'mother' they were all the same)_ were never around it had been on him to keep Cassidy safe and he had failed in the most spectacular way.

It was his fault.

It was his fault and no one knew it quiet like she did.


	9. Boyfriend

**Boyfriend**

* * *

He knew she'd be there. No matter which blonde Logan was dating she would have been there. It was ridiculous, he knew that her pool of friends was rather shallow but Logan kept pulling from it anyway.

He hadn't actually seen her since she'd arrived to shatter him with a sentence. A night that they both seemed to be doing an excellent job in pretending had never happened. They had barely acknowledged each others existence when he'd arrived with Ronnie.

He could tell she was doing better, maybe she'd unloaded some baggage on him, maybe it was the loss of her v-card.

He could read it on her, she'd lost a bit of that broken look to her and she was slowly refilling herself with that fire that Beaver had ignited in her. She was reclaiming herself and he hated it and he hated that animal loving pussy for letting her, for fucking her...

He ground his teeth and forced his eyes away from her only to have them pulled back at the sound of her laughter.

He hadn't heard that sound since grad night and it froze him and burnt him all at once.

There was another boy sitting on the couch with her and he _wanted_ her. It was obvious in the way he was sitting and that little bitch was basking a little awkwardly in the attention like she wasn't sure what exactly was going on.

How could she not know what's going on? He'd seen her and Beaver, he knew they got hot and heavy up to a certain point, a point she'd apparently crossed with Beav-lite and it was obvious to him that this nerd, this older guy, this guy he'd purchased 'study aids' from, wants him a piece of her too.

Fuck she was impossible.

"Dick?" A too feminine voice caught his attention and he turned to see Parker._ Fuck_ please don't tell him she caught him looking at ghostworld.

"Hey Parker...happy birthday."

Her smile is strained but genuine and its a nice smile, it's why he'd exchanged numbers with her at orientation, well one of the reasons.

She was nice and had a stabilising effect on Logan which was kind of good but crazy boring at least when he was with Veronica things were interesting, mysteries and stakeouts and shit.

"You know she has a boyfriend right?" She asks quietly like she doesn't want anyone else to listen in.

Which suits him fine.

He laughs at that thou and he can see out of the corner of her eye that it's caught Mac's attention, "I'm not the one who needs to know that." He tells her and walks away leaving Parker watching the interactions between her friend and the guy that certainly isn't her boyfriend.

He doesn't need anyone to tell him that she has a boyfriend. She's only ever interesting when she has one. Perhaps it was a grass is greener thing, but he was sure that she was brighter and stronger and better when she was in a pair.

Some people are just like that.

Logan for example.

Maybe even Beaver, because he was his best when he was with her, stronger more confident, there had been a blaze in him and he knew she'd started it.

Ugh what did it matter what she was or who she was with or what she had done to his brother, for his brother, he had hotties to partake in.

_Partake? Nice guess this college shit actually works_


	10. Elevator Threats

**Elevator threats**

* * *

He's sitting across from her and he can't stop talking.

it's like he's afraid if there's a silence she might say something, that she might take it upon herself to just wreck him again and he knows he can't take it. He's not as strong as her as much as he hates it, she seems to be able to take a hit much better than he can. She's so much better at putting herself together and it's just not fair because he can't even find half of the pieces.

So he talks about asses and lions and gerbils and watches her and silently begs Logan to put him out of his misery.

He doesn't.

So much for all that _brothers_ shit that Logan's always spewing, Cass would have...yeah well...

He spouts a line about walking in a straight line to find a party and leaves.

He manages to get as far as the hotel bar.

He's several drinks in when he see's that _guy_, the test guy, the one that wants in Mac's pants, walk through the lobby. He follows him into the elevator and watches him press the penthouse and fidget nervously.

_She has a boyfriend, you're not going to get anywhere. She's a good girl._

He leans in the corner of the elevator and watches him and he must be more drunk then he thought because he wants to put his fist through that fuckers face and he wonders if it's a trend. Anyone who wants to be with Mac, a rite of passage, you want to put your tongue in her mouth you must first have his fist in your face.

Except she'll know as soon as he steps through the door, the door to_ his_ fucking place, which wouldn't be the first time but Logan. Logan would find out, and Mac and Logan had this weird buddy thing going on that he hates and she'll tell him what happen, and that it wasn't the first time.

He doesn't want Logan to make that _I know what this is_ face.

He hates that face.

"You fuck with her and I'll cut off your revenue stream." He tells him as the door opens onto the top floor. God he must be drunk using a phrase like revenue stream.

"What?" The asshole turns wide eyes behind those Buddy Holly glasses, and he looks confused.

"If you _fuck_ with Mac, I'll cut off you're revenue stream."

The test dude narrows his eyes like he's trying to recognise Dick, like he's trying to judge if he could so he stands to his full height which just fucking towers over him and he's happy to see him take half a step back.

"You make good money on the Pi Sig's and I'll make it go away. I'll make it _all _go away." He tells him and his voice is that scary dark that Cass' used to get and the guys eyes widen like he gets it, like he thinks he'll make it happen.

"I wouldn't..." he opens his mouth to say more but he doesn't need to hear it, doesn't want to hear it, the whole I'd never hurt her, I care about her bullshit. He's never known anyone who cared more for Mac than his brother and look what he did. Having feelings for someone didn't mean you wouldn't hurt them, fuck look at Logan and Ronnie all they did was hurt each other.

The elevator starts to close again and the boy stretches out his arm to stop them.

Dick leans back against the wall of the elevator again, his job done, the kid is shaken. He has crushing people money and it must be written all over him. He'd be perfectly happy using the money he'd gotten from his brother to fuck this guy up. He's fairly certain Cass would approve. Not happy _normal_ Cass, but the boy who set pools on fire, who would have killed that kid for touching Mac, that Cassidy would be perfectly happy with the use of the money.

"Aren't you..."

"No." He's not going back, he's not going back until she's gone. He watches the guy stand there confused as the doors close and he hits the button for the lobby.

He tells the old guy at the desk to get him from the bar when Mac leaves.

The guy looks at him with eyes that are big and sad, like he knows what's going on and it's exactly the same look he expects from Logan if he ever found out.

* * *

**A/N:**So I did it! I wrote a whole novel, beginning, middle and end 51k in a whole month and now it's over and the deadline is gone so I will be updating my stuff with a beautiful calm and not vomit inducing worry. I really like pretty much all of the stories I'm in here and I'll try and give them all the attention they deserve. Please keep up the love. A whole month without you guys almost killed me.

LOVE YOU


	11. Voice in another room

**Voices in another room**

* * *

He liked to think that he had been doing all right on the pulling himself back together front.

Apparently he was wrong.

Because all it took was one visit from his father to completely destroy everything he'd been working on.

And one trip to his father to show just how messed up he was.

Because how could it _not_ be their fault. They were supposed to love and care and be good to Cassidy and they had treated him like a game. Like he was disposable and replaceable when it turned out he was the only thing in his life that wasn't.

He cancelled the surf trip. He had a couple months to try and figure out if his father even cared at all, because it sure as fuck didn't seem like it.

Because if he thought going to jail was punishment enough for the crimes they had committed he was wrong.

Yeah he was going to have a great summer. He'd gone to his classes and was doing decent and his reward was having to spend time with his father, how was that fair.

Then again maybe that was the point. Why should it be fair. After what he'd done.

Fuck he needed a beer.

"Logan did you wa-" the living room was empty.

He hates empty places, he's never liked them but before there had always been Cassidy to help fix it. A well placed insult and Cassidy would go off on him for hours, a headlock and his voice would fill any space. He could still hear the chatter in the back of his head sometimes.

He turns up the tv and goes into the kitchen for a beer and when he goes back to his room and closes the door its easy to pretend that the sound of the sitcom playing out in the living room are people.

As happened far too often his beer soaked mind wandered to Mac and Beaver. She had been the only one to ever think that Beav was this great thing. This irreplaceable...even thou she had tried to fill up her bed with strikingly similar men.

He had been such a jackass to them but they'd been so smart and secretive and he didn't like it, Beaver was his, had been his, and maybe that was true but she had purchase on_ Cassidy_ and ultimately that had mattered more.

It had kept her alive that night.

They had been this club of two whenever they were together and he wasn't invited, left to the big empty house alone... He'd wanted to hurt them because they were hurting him. Their exclusion burned still somehow.

Ugh he needed to apologise for being a dick otherwise he'd never be better than his father.

Next time he'd see her because it just didn't feel right to be carrying this pain alone when he knew that she was still in pieces over it. Maybe she had the pieces he was missing.

God he must be loosing his touch because he's sure he hasn't thought anything so pathetic in his life.


	12. Don't tell Logan

**Don't tell Logan**

* * *

Fuck

Fuck fuck fuck

He hadn't expected to see her so soon.

He wanted more time to piece together words that would actually fucking mean something.

Words that weren't going to sound stupid, something she would actually believe.

What was she doing over the summer...was she leaving town? Would this be his only chance because he seriously needed to get it done before he had to spend time with his dad. Or he'd be in worse shape then usual.

He asked them to join him and Logan and he pretends not to notice the look that Logan gives him. The dude should relax more, if he claimed to be her friend he was going to have to learn to deal with her boyfriends.

he saw it as kind of doing him a favour.

The way Logan threw his beer at him signalled that he did not agree.

Its not his fault she mentioned _thrust_ it was a beautiful window. He couldn't stop himself and she made her disgusted face and pushed away from the bench to help Wallace.

He followed her, Logan would forgive him eventually.

He puts a hand on her shoulder to stop her progress, their far enough away from the others and he can't even see Wallace yet.

"The way I treated you and Beav was totally uncool and I'm totally sorry..." The words tumbled out of his mouth and he knew they weren't good enough but they were all he had, everything he had.

She was looking up at him confused as if she couldn't figure out why he was saying it.

"Sure...forgiven."

"Cool...you're so cool...I get it know, what Beav saw in you."

Lie.

He'd always seen it. She had been this hot nerd thing, cold and sharp and burning.

He blames the beer but he's sure it only has a little bit to do with it.

He tries to kiss her she leans backward and pushes his face away. The look on her face is somewhere between disgusted and confused.

She just continues her journey down the beach to wherever Wallace is.

"Don't tell Logan!" He yells after her. He doesn't want to talk about his feelings and that is exactly what Logan will recognise that as. Not slightly drunk Dick being Dick but totally broken Dick having totally broken and messed up feelings for Mac.

When he gets back to the campfire Logan's alone.


	13. Forgive

**Forgive**

* * *

He doesn't follow Logan when he storms from the room after the Veronica based peep show.

He doesn't want to get involved.

Plus if he goes with him whose going to bail him out of jail?

See he only had his best interests at heart. He leans back on the couch and starts up Halo, trying not to think too hard about how bendy Ronnie still was.

There's a knock on the door shortly after and he wonders if maybe Logan lost his keycard in the brawl. Pausing his game he pushes up away from the too soft couch.

"Mac-" he looks down at her with wide eyes and his lungs freeze, "Logan isn't here..." He tells her because why else would she be here? He hadn't punched any of her boyfriends recently.

"That's fine." She mutters grabbing at her hair, its a fluffy mess of brown, theirs no chunk of color and he finds he misses them. She shifts from foot to foot, "can I come in?" She asks like she fully expects him to say no and slam the door in her face.

Maybe he would have before his father came back.

He steps away from the door and she wanders to the couch.

What the hell is this? His chest fucking hurts and he doesn't know if he should sit down next to her or not. God when the fuck did he start caring about what she thought...

A long time ago...

Pathetic.

He sits down on the couch in the same spot he'd been before she'd arrived hoping that the normality of it would stave off some of this panic.

Had Beaver felt like this when she was around? How could he stand it? He's far too aware of her mouth as she pulls her lips into her mouth, they come out red and wet and he wants to kiss her. Did Beav just want to kiss her all the time? They had done a lot of it so maybe. Maybe it was her working her kryptonite on him.

"So I heard your dad's back..." She trails off and looks away from him picking up the spare controller from the table and twisting it in her hands.

Is that what this is about? His father? What does she care?

"So what if he is?" His voice comes out too hard and she looks up at him quickly.

"I'm sorry I was just..." She makes a noise in the back of her throat all thick and fed up, she tosses the controller to the couch, "I don't know why I even came." She stands up and she looks down at him with those big broken eyes that mirror his and chews on her lip.

He should say something he's sure. But what the fuck does he say? Every other interaction with her has been very clearly one thing or an other he doesn't know what the fuck this is.

"I forgive you." She tells him and this time it sounds like she actually means it and its not just something that tumbles from her mouth to make him go away.

He sits up straight and she's so close to him, standing in front of him, that he could easily grab a hold of her. Pull her down onto the couch.

She couldn't push his face away now.

Oh fuck that's dark.

He looks away from her, "you should probably go." He tells her and he can't keep the darkness from his voice. He can quite obviously not be alone with her. He watches her hands, they move at her sides, grab onto the sides of her jeans and she seems desperate to have something to do with them and he can think of plenty of things he'd like her to do with them.

"Ronnie's going to need you."

"Veronica...why..." She sighs heavily, "what the hell did Logan do?" Her voice has a resigned tone like she'd been expecting this and honestly who could blame her he'd been expecting something too.

He looks up at her again and she steps further away from him, maybe she can feel that heavy feeling in the air between them now too.

He's felt it for two years.

"Just trust me." He tells her and rolling her eyes she leaves. Minutes later the gong show begins with Logan coming back bloody and bruised. Apparently Piss wasn't entirely the pussy he thought he was.


	14. Keys

**KEYS**

* * *

It had been a week since he'd seen anyone he actually liked.

Logan had fucked off to south america for a couple weeks to detox or find himself or whatever leaving him completely alone with his thoughts and the beer and his father.

He wasn't in a very good place.

At all.

In fact he was currently trying to unlock his car with his keycard.

"Okay so maybe a little too drunk to drive." He pulled his phone out of his pocket and glared at the numbers.

Logan would never forgive him if he got in an accident.

Especially since he was his emergency contact so he'd have to fly back from wherever he was finding himself to fill out his paperwork.

_MAC! Call this number in emergencies!_

She hadn't given him her phone number. Logan had programmed it in case there was an emergency. Apparently Logan trusted Mac with his life.

He hit connect and waited for her to pick up.

A boy picked up.

_Max._ Ugh wasn't that over yet?

"Hello?"

"Why hello, I need Mac." He tries not to slur but he's sure he does. It feels like a drunk dial and he wonders if Max thinks so too.

There's the sound of the phone being handed over and a muted conversation. Dick leans against his sports car. Its so pretty. He runs his fingers along its cool edge

"Slick." He smiles goofily at it.

"What? Who is this?"

"Oh! Hey its me!"

"How did you get this number?" She asks sleep shaking from her voice.

"Logan didn't tell you? He put you on babysitting duty while he was off the map or grid or what have you" he moves his hand with a flourish that no one see's.

"Dick your nineteen you don't need a babysitter." She sighs heavily and he can hear blankets like she's settling back in.

He can't stop the laughter that bubbles up, "you are the only person I've ever met who thinks that."

He can hear a soft laugh on her end.

"I need you to take me home." He tells her and it's serious, a sober sounding thing but he doesn't want to go home.

Home.

Yeah right.

There's another sigh on her end, heavy and impatient, "where are you?"

he looks around, "8th and Lincoln."

"Fine I'll be right there."

"Cool...cool."

He feels like he should make a joke but she hangs up before he can decide on how blue he can make it and still have her pick him up.

She picks him up in that stupid little car of hers...he remembers with a shocking clarity asking Beaver how he could manoeuvre in a back seat that small.

_Talent._

He'd said talent.

She leans over and opens the passenger side door, "get in boozey."

He does and he looks into the back seat. He could never fuck her in that space, too god damn narrow. But Beaver, he'd been narrow, slight even. _Fuck did he even know what slight meant?_

He collapses, his head in his arms, arms folded across the dash.

Don't cry.

Don't cry.

Don't cry.

They drive in silence and he hates it. Its heavy and he can just feel that she wants to ask him questions about this particular bender.

He fully expects her to stop in front of the doors and just push him out. Tuck and roll.

She doesn't.

She parks and turns off the car.

If he was sober or if she was drunk he'd expect to make out. Or maybe if she wasn't Mac.

She pulls out her keys and sets her hands in her lap and he notices that she's still in pyjamas. She'd left straight from bed for him. Little green shorts that ride up too high and her Hearst sweatshirt bunched up at the elbows. She looks pretty and it hurts to look at her too long.

The car is filled with the heavy sound of her breathing, she's waiting...for what? For him to leave probably.

He opens the car door when she finally speaks, "are you okay?" She asks but she's not looking at him. She's staring at the keys in her lap.

"No." He tells her and gets out of the car, closing the door probably too hard and walking into the hotel.


	15. Pretty

**Pretty**

* * *

The door won't open.

It wouldn't fucking open.

Just his luck.

Whatever he's not above sleeping in the hall. Maybe he deserves it.

He throws the keys at the door and stumbles back into the opposite wall, knocking a painting sideways.

"You're using the wrong key." A voice fills the hall and looks up at it.

Mac.

Standing in the hall in her pyjamas and flip flops.

"What are you doing here?" He asks her as she moves to pick up his keys.

"Well I wouldn't be a very good babysitter if I didn't make sure you got to bed now would I?" She smirks and holds out her hand.

Is he supposed to take it? Does she want him to hold her hand? Isn't that some surprisingly intimate shit?

"Keycard?" She asks raising an eyebrow at him like he's unbelievable. She really shouldn't do that. She's all together too much and he swallows hard before handing her his keycard.

She swipes it and pushes the door open.

"Come on." She tells him softly.

He wants to kiss her. She leans forward and grabs a hold of his arm and pulls him carefully into the hotel room.

Its too damn quiet in here.

"Its too damn quiet in here." He grumbles as she let's go of him to close the door.

"It tends to happen when no one else is here." She tells him matter of factly, like she thinks he's being silly.

"Yeah..."

She looks up at him with those stupid pretty broken eyes of hers like she gets it and he just wants to throw her down and have her scream his name.

His.

Just his.

Only.

Forever.

He's not going to make a drunken pass at her.

It had worked out so well last time.

He bites the inside of his mouth and watches as she goes into the living room and turns the tv on. Filling the room with the sounds of people.

He watches her from the front hallway as she moves around the suite. A glass of water and a bottle of gatoraid from the kitchen, pausing in the living room to change the channel when the tv turns into a horror movie, opening his bedroom and disappearing into it.

"Dick?" She calls from his room and its close to what he wants so he follows the sound and finds her sitting on his bed the bathroom garbage at the side of it.

He closes the bedroom door behind him and pulls off his shirt letting it fall wherever it wants.

He's working on his pants when Mac's voice rings out again, "what are you doing?!" She yelps jumping from the bed.

"Going to bed...what do you think I'm doing?" He knows what she thinks he's doing and he's kinda doing that. I mean if she were suddenly into it or something he's not exactly going to say no. He's not in the best shape for it but he'd make it work. He's fucked in worse shape before.

"Oh...um...right."

He narrows his eyes at her, she's blushing, he doesn't think he's seen it before.

It's cute.

He steps out of his pants and goes to the bed, he's still drunk and his limbs feel thick and his brain feels foggy so he's fairly certain this is the least sexy he's _ever _been except that time he had puke in his hair and Casey didn't tell him.

_Assface._

He sits down hard on the bed in front of her and his eyes come to a painful focus on her face.

He reaches out and taps her on the noise.

"You're pretty." He tells her and then proceeds to pass out, her shocked flushed face the last thing he sees.

As far as last things to see he's pretty happy with it.


	16. Morninglate afternoon

**Morning...late afternoon**

* * *

He wakes up at 2, alone.

Not that he really expected her to be there. In bed with him. He'd want to remember how she got there and all he had was spotty still frames of the night before.

There's the sound of a kettle whistling and at first he disregarded it for a cooking show.

But shortly afterwards the bedroom door eases open.

"You finally awake?"

Mac.

Holy shit.

Did she stay?!

"Did you stay..." The words tumble out of his mouth and his throat feels like a god damn desert.

"Of course." She tells him easily but she's still in the door like she expects him to just jump her. Which he didn't...at least he didn't remember it, "I had to make sure you didn't pull a Bonham." She smiles softly, "go take a shower and I'll take you to your car." She tells him raising her mug to her mouth.

He watches her for a long moment before she disappears.

She stayed.

That meant something right.

But what the fuck did it mean. He pushes away from the bed and sees how horribly full the garbage can is. Maybe what it meant was she legitimately thought he was going to die.

He looks back at the bed, there are pillows from Logan's room forcing him onto his side but on the other side of the pillow wall the bed is messed.

"Fuck."

He tried really hard to remember anything after he'd..._oh god_ said she was pretty. There was the vague memory of something cold on his nick and a hand on his back, which had to be Mac but there was nothing else.

He took a shower and brushed his teeth four times. He gave the bed a wide berth and got dressed.

She was on the couch, her knees up to her chest and her focus burning into the tv.

_Halo._

She was better than him and okay yeah that was kind of hot. Maybe he got why Cass had thought her hacking was so hot because this? This was hot. In her pyjama's, no make up, hair pulled away from her face and just kicking all kinds of ass? God he wanted to feel her. It felt like ache in his body, like it was crying out for her, but it was probably the hangover.

He stood there, his head throbbing watching her for what was definitely too long.

"You ready to go?" She asks without looking at him.

"Uh huh."

"Okay." She pauses like she expects to be back...god is she coming back? He wants her to, she's the only person he likes that he's seen since he saw Logan off at the airport. He likes her right? He must...

She grabs her phone off the table and he tries not to stare at the rise of her shorts when she bends down to pick up her purse. He digs his fingers into his palms because even hungover and in all kinds of pain he'd still give it to her.

Ruin her for other men, maybe even for ladies, certainly for her boyfriend.

_Boyfriend ugh._

They are half way to his car when he speaks, she's got the radio on this time to fill up the silences, "so how'd your_ boyfriend_ take you staying over after I robbed you from his bed and all." He hates it but the word boyfriend comes out wrong, it is not casual at all. It comes out stiff and kind of upset. Like he wants to make something of it.

She raises an eyebrow, "Max is fine with it."

Sure he is.

He's got to be ecstatic that his girlfriend got up in the middle of the night and left to pick him up, Dick Casablancas, slayer of ladies, Pi sigma sigma sex machine and then stayed the _whole_ night. He's got to know he's the guy from the elevator. How can he not? What guy would be okay with his girlfriend fucking off in the middle of the night to be with another man.

They weren't even friends so there wasn't that excuse at all.

She parked behind his sports car and handed him his keys. He sits in the car looking at his keys.

She turns off the car.

"Thanks." The word is rushed like he's trying to get it out before he realises what he's doing, "what are you doing today?"

"Umm..." She's biting her lip and staring at the back of his sports car, "I thought I'd go put clothes on and go back to the suite to whip you at Halo..."

Is she trying to make him feel better about his dad and junk?

What the fuck is going on?

Does he even care _what_ this is as long as it _is_?

"I look forward to beating you into the ground Ghostworld." He smiles at her and a small smile ghosts across her face and he let's himself out of the car.


	17. Big Dick

**Big Dick**

* * *

He's sitting in front of the tv looking at her paused game and wondering what the hell is going on here.

Not that that's new.

He's never really known what was going on with Mac.

He wanted to fuck her sure and that part made sense on too many levels. But he wouldn't mind if she hung around after, which was weird and new.

He must just be lonely...wow that's sad. When has a Casablancas ever been lonely...

Cassidy.

His father.

Wow she needs to get back like now because he is going to full on hair of the dog spiral if he keeps this up.

There's a knock on the door, _thank god._ He rushes to the door. Pauses. He doesn't want to seem like he was waiting for her or anything. After another knock he opens the door.

It's Mac, but its not _just_ Mac.

His father has a hand on her shoulder and she's looking down at her shoes.

"Dick. I found this lovely lady in the hallway."

Mac's face flushes and she looks down the long hallway to the elevator like she means to escape.

"Apparently she is here for you?"

"Yeah." He reaches out and grabs a hold of Mac's arm and pulls her into the suite, she makes a small squeak of surprise as he pulls her behind him, "what do you want?"

Annoyance flashes across his fathers face, apparently he thought having Mac there would curb his temper or decrease the likelihood of a scene.

He's wrong.

What does he have to hide from Mac.

"I came up to see if you were free for dinner."

"I'm not. I'm going out with Mac." He tells him quickly like its not a lie and he hadn't just planned on ordering room service and playing video games and trying to make her forget she had a boyfriend.

"She's welcome to join us." He smiles brightly at her and it turns his stomach. He has no right to even look at her. She belonged to Beaver, she belonged to _him_. But he's just oozing that charm that every successful con man has. His father looks at him and he has the gull to look remorseful and he's positive he only looks that way because Mac is there, "I'll pick you both up at 8?" He asks and its a soft fragile sounding thing that burns his blood.

But Mac is totally falling for it. He can feel her hot hand on his back and he looks down at her and she seems to be trying to communicate with her eyes and all he's getting from it is that she's pretty and a lot more gullible than he thought she was.

He sighs heavily, "fine but Mac's a vegan." He tells him, his father nods and steps back away from the door.

He closes the door hard and turns to look down at her.

"What the_ fuck_ was that?" He asks and his voice is dark and hard and he expects her to step back like everyone else does when he uses his Cassidy voice.

She doesn't. Maybe she'd heard it before and didn't associate it with a ruthless _killer._

She stands there straight backed and looks up at him her mouth a firm line, her eyes hard his eyes flick down and her hands are balled up.

And he hates how hot he thinks it is.

"I wanted to see if he knew who I was." She tells him and immediately her posture changes and her eyes drop. There's something else, another reason he can feel it in the heavy silence between them but she keeps whatever it is too herself.

She moves into the living room and unpauses her game to start up another.

He sighs and sits down next to her.

She hands him a controller and he takes it, she holds on tightly and he turns to see she's looking at him.

"What?"

She flushes and let's go of the controller looking into her lap instead like it holds the answers or something, he could find an answer there for her if she wanted, "do I need to change?" She picks at the edge of her sweater, a light, blue thing that makes her eyes painfully attractive, and a set of short jean shorts.

"I'm not." It would cut into his halo time with her.

She nods and settles back into the couch, she's sitting so close he can feel the heat pouring off her and he can't believe her.

How can she just sit there next to him in short shorts and that soft looking sweater and not be worried he's going to do something?

Because he wants to.

Does she know some sort of secret art of asskickery that makes her feel safe with him?

He turns his focus to the tv because they've barely started and she's already spanking him.


	18. dinner

**A/N: ** so this one kinda ran away from me. I kinda just got into a flow and couldn't stop. I've been listening to Take Care by drake and honestly I think it matches surprisingly well. Hope you like it. I really think finishing my novel helped me with focus.

**Dinner**

* * *

It's twenty to eight.

His father is probably in the elevator or picking out a tie or something equally damning.

"We still have time to escape. We could use the stairs?" They always say use in case of emergencies and he can't think of anything more emergency-esque then having to have dinner with his father.

His father and Mac.

Mac is twisting her hands around obviously nervous, chewing her lip, "we aren't going to run out of the building Dick. You're an adult, I'm an adult," he smirks at that because no one else in the world would ever classify him as an adult, "it's just dinner, it'll be fine."

She doesn't sound convinced.

He looks down at her and she's too pretty, his father is going to hit on her, he can just feel it. Oh god does her kryptonite tendencies reach to his father? Can't she ugly herself up a bit?

Ugh she's going to sit there at dinner and be smart and pretty and his father is going to just _know_ that he wants her and doesn't have her.

There's a knock on the door and with a body that feels way too heavy he goes to the door. Hoping its his fathers secretary or PA telling him he can't come, like the trip to universal that Cass and him took alone for Cass' thirteenth birthday.

But he's there in jeans and an oxford. Looking totally normal and not at all like the asshole con man he is.

"Ready?" He asks peaking around Dick to find Mac. His father's mouth quirks into a smirk and he turns to see that Mac's bent down to grab her purse from the floor.

He sidesteps ruining his fathers view and shakes his head. He wonders briefly if his father would still be alive if he'd been around when Beaver had the habit of leaving Mac around the house. Because surely he would have tried something with her.

And there is no doubt in his mind now that if Butters had laid a hand on her he'd be in a shallow grave.

"Are we ready to go?" Mac asks poking him in the back.

Why does she keep touching him. Doesn't she understand how hard it is for him to not just throw her down?

* * *

"How can you eat that?" He asks taking his fork and poking at the tofu on her plate. Its this weird block of off white something. It looks like it was made with fucking playdough for fuck sakes.

She bats his fork away with her own.

"Like this." She stabs a square of tofu and pops it in her mouth with a flourish.

Its almost possible to forget this his father is sitting across from him.

"So...Mac? That's an odd name for a such a lovely girl, what's it short for? Mackenzie?" He asks and he can't help but think that his father is trying to get in her good graces or something. Like he'll be able to get to him through her.

Which probably rings truer than it should.

It probably would have worked for Cass too.

"Well actually it is but Mackenzie is my last name."

"Her name's Cindy. With a Y." He emphasises hoping to get the point across that Mac isn't some slut friend of his he can nail.

"Congratulations Dick you can spell my name. Want me to buy you a dessert as a reward?" Mac rattles off, her tone flat and dark and somethings working behind his fathers eyes that he doesn't particularly care for.

"You go to Hearst with Dick?" He asks and his questions all have to do with Mac and he doesn't like it. Like he's trying to figure out what her angle is.

_Not everyone needs an angle._

"I do, I'm a computer science major and before you ask no I'm not greek."

He likes that his fathers mouth shuts at that.

"A girl in CS, there aren't very many correct?"

"That's right it's me and one other girl from North Dakota."

"I'm surprised, girls like you usually go into business."

She looks up at him and_ holy shit_ those are the eyes that cut. Those are the blue sharp smart things that cut right through him in high school. That made him burn for her. Put those away before _Big Dick_ gets any ideas!

"Girls like me? I hope you don't plan on saying _pretty girls_."

His father is smiling at her and he picks up his wine glass, "while I don't disagree with the statement I just meant that you appear very..."

"Clever?"

"Sarcastic?" Dick supplies and he's rewarded for his contribution with an elbow to his ribs.

There's laughter and surprised he looks up and finds his father laughing.

"Well spoken?" His father supplies, "confident and well spoken girls so often go into business or marketing."

Ugh he's trying to sweet talk her. He goes to grab his beer, bring the glass to his mouth he takes a large gulp of_ water?_ He looks back at the table, had he picked up Macs water by mistake.

No.

She'd moved the glasses.

"I'd much rather make the product than just gush about how many colors it comes in." She tells his father firmly and there's an undertone, dark and he has the distinct feeling she's calling him out as a con man.

"Yes you do seem like you like to get hands on. "

That is most definitely a leer.

He is leering at Mac!

Mac slams back his beer to avoid having to say anything in return and he can't fault her for a second since its been his tactic for years.

"You'll excuse me." She looks directly at Dick like she wants him to go with her to the bathroom or something. He's only been in the girls bathroom twice and he's fairly certain that she'd be pissed with him if he tried to recreate those events with her. For one she's wearing shorts not a skirt, it would make the whole thing so much more difficult.

The table is silent for a long minute in her absence, she is so obviously a much needed buffer, helping him skirt away from topics that oddly enough her presence always brings to mind.

"I like her."

"Yeah I'm sure you do. I wouldn't get to invested in it, she's not the type to make conjugal visits." he bites back pushing the greens around on his plate.

"Dick." his father's voice hisses, low and authoritative and he finds it kind of funny. He has no authority any more. He lost any authority he had the second he hadn't come to Cass' funeral.

"What? I have eyes, I can see you looking at her like she's some sort of toy..."

"As opposed to the way you look at her?"

"I don't-"

"Don't bullshit and bullshiter Dick, you were never very good at it." His eyes are oddly hard and he's sitting up so straight that he can see for a second the man he had wanted to be, "It's not like you have you're name written on her or anything. You think I can't see that?"

"No, she has Cassidy's name written on her instead." he tells him.

"What?"

"She was Beaver's girlfriend. If you gave a shit about him maybe you'd know that."

His father's head drops, his eyes soften, "That's the girl?" he looks oddly sad and he's glad of it. He had been a wreck, was a wreck it was about time his father joined the god damn party.

"Yeah. She's the girl, _the one_, Cass loved her, he had her name on his binders and notebooks and shit, but you wouldn't know that, since I was the one that had to clear out his room. He had tickets to Paris in his room, and pictures stuck in his mirror. I had to cancel the tickets, and hotel rooms and I had to put every stupid smiling face in a god damn box. Where the hell were you."

"Dick I was on the run...I couldn't."

"You _wouldn't._"

There's a hand on his shoulder and he turns to see Mac standing there with red eyes, "Let's go." she tells him, her voice barely above a whisper.

He nods and taking her hand roughly he leads her out of the restaurant. His fingers wrapped tightly around hers he storms away from the building and down the street cursing the fact that he'd let his father drive.

He's seething and his breath is coming to fast and all he can remember is box after box and running out of god damn packing tape and thinking that Cassidy never would have run out of tape, what the fuck was he supposed to do.

He wasn't the smart one.

He didn't know what he was doing.

He'd never known what he was doing.

He'd never _had_ to know because it was Dick and Beaver always and when he fucked up Cass had fixed it.

Who was going to fix it now.

A sniffle behind him reminds him of Mac, and her hand still in his. He stops and looks back at her and she's crying.

"What?" he asks and lets go of her hand worried that he was hurting her.

"Paris?" she asks and her voice is thick and pained, "I've never been to..." She starts rubbing frantically at her eyes trying to stop the sobs shaking across her body.

"Oh fuck Mac, I'm sorry." He moves her hands from her face and using the edge of his shirt he wipes her face, "How about we go back to the suite and get shitfaced and play Halo till we pass out." he offers and she looks up at him, her eyes red.

She nods and lets him take her hand again. It's hot and warm and small in his and her fingers grip onto him tightly like she expects him to disappear and there's something grounding in the desperate grip.


	19. text messages

**Text messages**

* * *

He wakes up in worse shape than the day before and on the couch.

The menu for Halo filling the room with it's escalating orchestrated melody, he feels like he's about to get in some sort of epic battle for the good of man kind, not that he's really the type.

He's sore everywhere, who knew that Mac could put so much away, shot after shot she took it like a fucking champ.

He pushed himself off the couch a controller and an empty can of beer tumbling to the floor in his wake.

Kitchen.

He needed to get to the kitchen.

Water

or electrolites

something liquid needed to go in his body because he was positive in the way that the whole place was just a little off kilter that the second he put anything solid in his stomach it would make an immediate reappearance.

He leaned heavily against the fridge and took a deep breath.

He was a practised drunk, he could handle this, Logan would never let him live it down if he knew just how wrecked he felt. He opened the fridge and pulled out two Gatoraid's, if he was feeling this rough Mac must have been a fucking mess.

She barely drank but she had kept up with him pretty much the whole night.

Drinking and shooting at each other and strangers and actively not talking about his family. He doesn't remember when he passed out, hell he doesn't remember when _she_ passed out. He's sure however they had slept together on that couch but maybe she had moved in the night.

Slamming back some unnaturally blue liquid his mouth finally feels functioning.

"Mac? You want a drink? Non-alcoholic I promise." He calls out but the suite has that distinctly empty feel to it.

He checks Logan's room, bed empty and still made, the bathroom empty.

His own, the bed is slightly messed and a pillow is missing.

He moves to the bathroom door expecting to find her out cold on the floor by the toilet, worshipping at the porcelain throne and all.

All there is, is a pillow and a blanket on the floor in front of the toilet.

She's gone.

He's not sure why he's so surprised, two nights in a row is a lot to ask of someone you don't actually consider a friend.

Making his way back to the couch he settles in to waste another day waiting for Logans return. What the fuck day is it even?

He picks his phone up off the table.

_monday_

gross.

There's a message?

Probably Logan checking up on him, making sure he's still alive and shit.

It's from Mac.

His chest tightens and he opens the message.

_Hey, sorry I had to leave, I start my internship today. If you need me call. _

His soft laughter fills the room, overlapping the epic Halo theme. She had stayed and drank well into the night when she had to start her internship the next day.

_So how hungover are you? Or are you still drunk?_

He sends, changing the tv over the food network. Seriously he can't cook at all but he could spend all day just watching the cooking channel. It's weird.

His phone beeps

_I'm pretty sure all the alcohol made an emergency exit this morning, thanx for the concern._ _All the numbers on the screen are melting together! What have you done to me!_

Numbers? where the fuck was she? And he could have done a lot more to her than just ply her with booze and video games.

_I could do a lot more if you wanted. Where are you anyway? You have an office? I've always wanted to fuck someone in an office. sweep the desk and everything._

There's a long time until he gets the next message.

_I'm at Kane software, I have a cubical, doesn't really lend itself very well to afternoon trysts._

Look at her not just telling him that she didn't want to have sex with him on a desk. He had been sure the delay would have been her sending a long message invoking her boyfriend but no. Maybe she did want to have sex with him on a desk, things were looking good.

_I can make it work, you have a desk right? think I could fit under it?_

The response is almost instant.

_You could... but if you are implying what I think you are I think I'll pass. I mean whats the point if it's not going to be good enough to make me scream your name?_

He stares at her words for too long trying to think of something to say. His hungover brain is too busy playing out office related sexy time with Mac.

His phone goes off again.

A picture from Mac...

Opening it he finds it's of her desk, more specifically of under her desk, her legs on the edges of the photo, bare legs and the edge of a skirt. Fuck.

It wouldn't be very comfortable for him but fuck if he's not willing to try.

He wants to see her and everything about this conversation suggests that she wants to see him too.

_When do you have lunch? I'll take you for some of that gross vegan food_

He actually holds his breath waiting for her reply. He's going to die, or pass out or something because it's getting painful.

It finally goes off in his hand right before he's about to go blue and pass out.

_In an hour and a half but Max is coming to pick me up for lunch..._

Of course her actual boyfriend. He tosses the phone across the couch and settles in to watch Alton Brown make marshmallows.

It goes off again.

and he most certainly doesn't dive across the couch to get it.

cancel your plans with Max, cancel you plans with Max, cancel you plans with Max.

_Tomorrow?_

It's not quiet what he was hoping for but it's better than what he expected.

_Cool_


	20. lunch date

**Lunch date**

* * *

He leans down on the receptionists desk and smiles at the blushing blonde behind the desk.

"Umm...wha...what can I do for you?" She stutters and flushes like she can't believe she did that.

"I'm looking for Cindy Mackenzie? She's an intern."

"Oh." She definitely looks disappointed that he's here to see a girl and it fills him with that familiar confidence he so often doesn't feel around Mac, "hold on a second." She picks up her phone and he puts a hand down on hers.

"Which floor is she on?"

"The fifth." she whispers bashfully.

God this girl hasn't got a fucking chance, he's been getting his way with a smile and a suggestive touch for a fucking decade. If he can talk his way into the bed of a married women at the age of sixteen he could get this girl to let him into Jake's office. Where was the challenge? Oh right on the fifth floor.

He flashes her a smile, bright and suggestive and heads to the elevator bank.

Mac is near the back of the cubicle pool in the centre of the floor. She's got her back to him, her hair is clipped back and he's got his fingers crossed for naughty librarian look.

She's not looking at her monitor, she's looking at her cell phone and he wants it to be for him. Because she's waiting for his message or a call from the front desk on the red landline attached to her desk, that she keeps looking at.

He slides into her cubicle, yeah he could totally fit under her desk. He raises his arms to clamp his hands over her eyes when her phone goes off.

Her shoulders sag a little and she waits a moment before she answers it.

"Hey..."

"Yes I'm still going why wouldn't I go?"

"Its not like that Max, he just...no he doesn't!"

He has a fairly good feeling that whatever Max is suggesting he wants is absolutely true.

"I'm not going to abandon him Max." She tells the phone sternly and he can't believe she'd say that. Sure they had spent two nights in a row together but they could be easily written off. Nothing really happened between them, not physically anyway. Did something change between them...did something change for her in those two days?

"I don't..." She's spinning slightly in her chair and he steps further into her cubicle to avoid detection.

"I'm... You're bring ridiculous..." She makes an irritated noise in the back of her throat, "stop being such a little bitch its just Dick. I'll talk to you tonight." She hangs up and slams her phone down on the desk.

He leans down and whispers in her ear, "trouble in nerd-paradise?"

She jumps and shoots out of her chair, hands tight around the cubicle half wall she looks at him with wide eyes.

"How long have you..."

"Long enough to know that I could totally fit under that desk." He smirks at her and her eyes narrow, "you wearing underwear?" He asks and her eyes grow wide and it takes her a moment to get her game face on.

"In this heat?" She raises an eyebrow at him like the answer should be obvious and he smiles reaching out for her skirt.

She let's him get his hands on the edge and his fingers curl up around the boring grey material and her skin is hot and soft. And his heart is hammering against his rips because she feels amazing.

He doesn't get a chance to pull it up, her hand comes down hard on his knuckles and she turns on her heel and walks towards the elevator like she plays with him like this every day.

God how did Beaver deal with this? This flirty, sexy thing that Mac was, had she always been like this? Or is this college Mac.

He follows her to the elevator.

She holds the door for him and the second its closed he pushes her up against a wall. He wants to just rip into her, he could fuck her right here. The emergency stop button wasn't that far away. She's looking up at him with those eyes of hers, and their beautiful and broken and he just wants to fix her somehow.

Which is ridiculous because he can't even fix himself.

"Dick..." She puts her hands on his chest and pushes lightly.

He steps away and leans against the opposite wall. A hand running through his hair he watches her until they reach the lobby. She looks conflicted at least he thinks that's what conflicted looks like.

"There's a mexican place down the block." She tells him when they reach the fresh air, "I've been craving mexican all day." she smiles up at him but it's shaky and he just knows he went to far in the elevator. Whatever had made her feel safe with him is disappearing and he doesn't know what he'll do if she looses it completely.

She can't.

Not when she's the only one in the whole damn city that he likes to spend time with.

She has to hold on until Logan comes back. She just has to.

"Sounds good." he agrees and they walk down the block, walking too close to each other. She's too warm and he knows how soft her skin is and he just wants to not care about how she'll deal with it and just kiss her.

god why does he care how she'll deal with it?

"Have you seen you're dad since dinner?" she asks quietly.

oh yeah that's why.

"No...I'm supposed to spend the day with him tomorrow...apparently that's enough time to get over the fact that he's a bastard."

"You can call me after...you know if you want..." she shrugs and opens the door to the mexican place for him.

"Yeah maybe." he shrugs and hopes he comes across as uncaring. He's not sure it's possible to come off like that with this topic. Not when she knows how hammered he's gotten over it, not when it effects her just the same.

He buys her some all bean no cheese burrito and a coke. He orders a fish taco almost entirely so he can make the teenage girl behind the counter feel uncomfortable.

They eat on a bench outside and he wants to say something to her but he can't land on a topic.

dump your boyfriend doesn't really seem like the best topic to make her feel comfortable around him.

what a _dick_ his father is would lead to other things, things neither of them want to talk about.

she doesn't care about surfing so he can't talk to her about the waves this morning other than he caught some and they were good (she nods while stuffing her face and looking at her watch)

he doesn't care about computer shit so what she says about her internship just goes over his head.

He walks her back to the Kane building positive that this lunch _thing, _because he is now positive that it isn't a lunch _date_, is pretty much a bust.

At the elevator bank she grabs a hold of his wrist. Her hot fingers wrapped around his wrist. He looks down at her and she's staring up at him and wetting her mouth. Okay maybe not such a total bust after all.

"Call me tomorrow." she doesn't ask she basically tells him, "and if you need me call me okay? I'll come get you."

"Yeah sure..."

"I mean it Dick."

"What if I'm in mexico?"

"Then I'll yell at you all the way back from mexico."

The elevator arrives and her fingers slip from his skin and he instantly misses the contact. She watches him as the elevator doors close and he can't help but smile as she mimes a phone.


	21. Three minutes fourteen seconds

**Three minutes Fourteen Seconds**

* * *

He stands across from his father in the suite. He's got his hands in his pocket, one wrapped around his phone, waiting for his father to say something.

Anything.

He's been looking around the suite, judging it. And Dick would much rather they just get in a fight or a screaming match than this...this quiet judgey thing.

"How's Cindy?" He asks finally noticing the lipgloss and soy beverage still on the table.

"Mac and she's fine."

"What's she doing this summer..."

_Besides babysitting you_, hangs in the air between them unsaid.

"She has an internship at Kane Software." He supplies wishing the topic would change.

He doesn't like talking about her...thinking about her sure he can't fucking stop that but whatever that's a private thing, that's a no one else knows what a mess you are thing, but out loud she gets more and more solid and somehow more unattainable.

His father makes a noise of approval.

"She's smart."

"Yeah..."

He turns to look at him and they look at each other for a long moment. Dick leaning against the wall waiting for something to happen, waiting for a shoe to drop or whatever it was.

He had always wanted his father to be proud of him, it had always been his father and him in a club just like Cassidy and Mac. It had felt so good to be able to hold it above Cassidy.

It was laughable know how much he would trade his father for his brother now.

"Did she know..."

"Know _what_? About the bus? Or about Veronica? Or about Woody?"

His father visibly cringes and he's glad. He hopes it hurts. He hopes he's filled with that all consuming guilt over what they've done, because it just fucking eats at him.

"No, she didn't know. Not until after he was dead. He killed everyone who knew except Woody..."

"I saw the profits for his company...he was always so smart, using him like that..." The words are soft, gentle even, coated in an affection that is all together too late.

Where was this when they were telling him he was adopted and betting on how long it would take him to cry. Where was it when they went to the gun range without him even thou he was a better shot then the both of them.

"Its a little late to praise him dad." He should be kinder, they say that nothing is worse then burying your children...then again he hadn't been there..._Big Dick_ hadn't buried Cassidy.

He did.

"He was my son Richard."

Wow whole name. He's not sure he's ever heard him say it before, his mom sure but never his dad. He'd be shocked if the whole idea didn't boil his blood.

He pushed off the wall, "it's a little late for that don't you think?"

"Dick..." His father says his name slow like its a warning but he's having none of it.

"Three minute fourteen seconds."

"What?"

"Fifty bucks. Three minutes fourteen seconds."

His father looks honestly confused and he hates it. Why is he the only one who remembers this shit? Why is he burdened with god damn everything bad that had ever happened to Cass.

He remembers fucking everything with a painful clarity.

"What are you talking about?"

"Fifty bucks is how much money you bet me that you could make him cry in under three minutes by telling him he was adopted."

"Dick that was a long-"

"A long time ago? Yeah it was but you know when it happened? When he was in little league."

His father looks like he's going to be sick.

Good.

He's been sick enough.

"You had to pay me because he lasted fourteen seconds longer than you thought he would. I can still remember exactly what he looked like when he started crying and you looked at your watch and swore._ Fourteen seconds_ and you stood up and got out your wallet and he looked so god damn broken and why wouldn't he."

"Dick...it wasn't your fault."

"No." He says and for the first time he actually believes it a little bit, "it's your fault." His voice has that dead serious quality it almost never gets, "you ever wonder why he didn't come to us? Why he didn't tell us that Woody did that to him?" He pauses long enough to see tears form in his fathers eyes, "because I don't."

His throat feels that tell tale thick and he doesn't want his father to see him cry. Not again.

He storms towards the door.

"Dick! Where are you going?"

He doesn't answer he just leaves the suite and he takes the stairs, running down the flights until he's lost count of which floor he's on.

The parking level.

He pats down his pockets and comes out with his car keys and pushes the door open.

It's cold and the chill runs across him and he moves quickly to his car.

He takes off, he doesn't know where he's going he just knows he needs to not be here.


	22. Take care

**Take Care**

* * *

He pushes himself up out of the sand and looks at his phone.

Its ringing.

Again.

The Zelda theme...

"Mac..."

For the first time in a week he answers his phone.

"Where the _fuck_ are you?!" Her voice bursts across his brain.

"Why hello Miss. Mackenzie so nice to hear from you too..."

"Don't Dick..." she sounds actually worried and his words die in his throat. He can hear her swallow on the other end of the line, a long low breath and she starts again. Her voice more even this time, "where are you?" She asks again.

"A beach in mexico..."

She chokes on her spit a little bit and he can't stop the short laugh that bursts from him.

"Umm okay, I had thought you were kidding when you said that the other day...but okay. Umm...I'll be there in a couple of hours I guess."

"Mac." Her name comes out firm and he imagines that she looks up from her search for her passport.

"What? What's wrong?"

"You don't even know where I am yet..."

He had no intention of letting her pick him up. But this worry was sweet and it warmed what he could only assume was his heart.

"Oh right. Where are you?" He can hear something or someone in the background.

Max.

Ugh.

He flops back into the sand. He hates that guy. He's going to have to study next year on principle alone.

He spouts off an approximate address and he knows it has more to do with the fact that he wants to prove to Max that Mac belongs with him, that she cares more about him than she ever will care about that punk.

"Don't do anything stupid while you wait okay?"

"Sure..."

"Swear Dick I don't have money to bribe officials or pay bail okay?" Her voice gets firm and it pulls a smile across his face.

"Swear." He crosses his fingers over his heart even thou she can see him.

"Okay good." She doesn't wait for him to say anything in return she just hangs up.

He watches the clouds slowly drift by until he falls asleep right there in the hot mexican sand.

* * *

A dark shadow is thrown across him and interrupts the steady stream of beautifully hot sun.

He opens his eyes to see Mac standing over him.

"Hey."

"Hey? Really?" She sounds pissed and her hands are balled up and attached to her hips.

He sits up and she doesn't step back. Her body is close enough that he could reach out and wrap his arms around her and pull her down into the sand.

He reaches out a hand to her and her hand comes down sharp across his knuckles.

"I told you to call me Dick."

Just another girl in a long line pissed he didn't call.

He rolls his eyes.

"I just wanted to be there for you." She tells him but all the righteous indignation is gone, melted leaving only too raw words and he's not sure he can breath properly.

She holds out her hand and she's looking away into the distance like she's not sure if he'll take her hand or not.

God its all he wants to do.

He takes it and pulls her down into the sand with him. She lands half on his lap.

"Dick!" She yelps out pushing away from him but there's a smile on her face and its totally worth it.

"So where's your car? We'll want to get back before Max thinks I've stolen you for good."

he notices a falter in her smile, her face suddenly dims and oh god let them have broken up.

Let them have broken up because of him.

"He'll get over it." She shrugs and pushes herself up out of the sand.

That wasn't a there is no Max. That was a we'll get through this kind of response.

He didn't like it.

At all.

But she drove all the way to mexico to pick him up. That meant something, please god it had to.

"My cars just over there...hey?"

Oh no she's going to ask

"Where's your car?"

He stands up in the sand, and focuses on removing the tiny grains from his hair, "I lost it."

"You lost it?" She basically snorts, "well where did you have it last?"

He rubs the back of his neck and looks above her head so he doesn't have to see the look on her face, "I didn't lose it like that...I _lost_ it."

"Lost it...oh my god you lost it in a game of cards didn't you." She doubles over in laughter.

"It's not funny! I loved that car!"

She puts a hand on his chest to steady herself, "but that's why its so funny."

He can't believe how much difference having a breakdown around her has done. The last time she had her hand on his chest she'd punched him in the face and just fucking _wrecked_ him.

Now she looks up at him through her hair, her face flushed with laughter and her eyes had that soft quality. That welcoming soft warmth they used to have for Cass.

He smiles at her and she returns the smile and pushes away from him to walk to her car, "you have any money?" She asks over her shoulder.

"Like on me?"

"Yeah."

"Nope."

"Well come on I'll buy you a taco before we go."

* * *

Their sitting in the line to go back to california, its hot, all the windows are down and there's absolutely no air movement.

"It's not too late to go back." He tells her and she pushes her hair out of her face and looks at him.

"Go back _where_?" He points back the way they came and she laughs a little, "mexico? And do what?"

He shrugs, "I'll surf and you can try to get a tan...seriously you've lived in southern California your whole life and your as pale as a ghost." He puts his hand on her pale leg, his hand splayed across her, tan and large. His fingers are touching the inside of her thigh and it would be so easy to make a move.

It always seemed easy but he could never push himself over that boundary. That invisible wall between them that was killing him.

She puts her hand over his and for a long moment she just leaves it there, "you can't keep running away Dick." She tells him softly, her fingers wrapping around his hand.

"But I'm so good at it..." He turns his hand in her loose grip and holds onto her hand.

Tightly.

Because everything with Mac feels like this huge something that's always ending.

"We could stay...I'll take care of you." He looks up at her and she's crying, "oh god Mac don't cry. I promise I can." He moves his hands to her face and wipes the tears away with both hands.

He's leaning across the console and he can feel her shaking breath on his face.

She lifts her hands and stills his, he's holding her face.

"I could..." He whispers and he wants to say more, wants to tell her about how he'd buy her a house and all the stupid computer crap she wanted, how he'd keep the house stocked with red vines and that weird tofu crap. They don't even have to sleep together, he just...he just wants her to be around all the time because she makes him feel like he's a whole person, like its fine to be broken.

He has this feeling that she is the only thing he might be any good at.

"Dick..." She wets her mouth and he swears to god she moving in when a car horn blast breaks them apart.

She swears and moves up to the window of the border patrol.

She's so intensely focused on the road the entire drive home that he barely says another word to her for fear of her driving them into the ocean.

* * *

The car is sitting in front of the hotel doors and he's not getting out.

The silence is thick between them, its hard to breath.

He turns to her and she's looking at him, her eyes red and puffy and she still manages to somehow look pretty. He reaches out his hand to brush away some hair but she pulls away before he can even feel the heat of her skin.

That's it.

He's said too much to her and he's spoiled everything. Of course he did, he wouldn't be Dick if he didn't. Why wouldn't she be totally freaked out after he told her he'd take care of her, the heavy implications of that are impossible to miss. He might as well have pulled a ring out of his pocket.

"Good night Dick." She tells him and bites her lip and drops her eyes.

A heavy sigh escapes him, "Goodnight Mac." He opens the car door.

"I'll see you tomorrow."

Wait what? He turns back to her, she's staring at the steering wheel.

"What?"

She shrugs, "You'll never get better at Halo if I don't come over right?"

His insides feel lighter because she is trying to fix it. She's trying to pull them back away from his desperate edge.

"Right."


	23. Prodigal One

**Prodigal One**

* * *

"You're cheating!"

He loops his arms around her neck and pulls her sideways, her focus it ridiculous. He's knocking her controller with his and she is still fucking winning. He's got her basically in a headlock, Mac's sneakers pressed into the arm of the couch trying to give her some sort of stability.

"Just because I'm _soooo_ much better than you doesn't mean I'm cheating Dick." She returns and he twists his body so she's laying in his lap and her eyes finally break from the tv to look up at him and fuck he wishes she hadn't.

It's so much easier to pretend like Mexico didn't happen if she doesn't look at him.

So much easier to pretend that he hadn't basically asked her to marry him.

Her gaze just burns and hurts and feels great all at once.

His mouth opens to say something when her knee comes up hard into his back and what comes out instead is a vulgar mess of syllables.

The suite is full of the sounds of video game gun fire, his swearing and her laughter and that's the way Logan finds them.

He drops his bags to the floor and they make that thick heavy sound that pulls his attention to him.

He's got an eyebrow raised and Mac squirms out of his grip.

"So the prodigal one returns. I thought you were going to leave me on babysitting duty_ forever._" Mac smiles at him and gets up and punches him in the shoulder. Logan rubs his arm like the contact hurt and he can't help but laugh a little because he's sure she could do damage if she wanted to.

"I figured I needed to come back before you killed Dick but you guys seems to be doing okay..." he's looking at him like he knows something. He had hoped him Ronnie-detoxing in the jungle would have taken away that stupid _I know what's happening_ look.

Apparently it was too much to ask for.

"So you get into trouble with the locals then?" He asks settling back into the couch.

Logan smiles that wide cat ate the canary thing he has and picks up his bags and heads across the suite to his room.

It'll be nice to have the suite filled with noise again but he can't help think that the entrance of Logan means the exit of Mac. He watches Mac wander across the room to lean against the open doorway of Logan's room.

Their talking about something but its not quite loud enough like they don't want him to hear but are too damn lazy to actually make it a secret.

She's probably telling him about Mexico and about how _well_ he's been taking seeing his father.

Its not a secret guys, he knows he's a fucking mess and the one person he'd been trying to hide it from knows better than anyone.

Mac moves from the bedroom door and sits down heavily on the couch next to him.

Close.

Probably too close to the _just friends_ bullshit they apparently are.

"So I figure I'll kill you a couple more times and leave so you and your hedero-lifemate can catch up." She tells him. Reaching across him for her controller.

She basically rests her chest against his lap and his hand hovers above her ass. She's not paying attention. How can she not be acutely aware of everything? He could swear he could feel her heartbeat and her breath through his jeans and its impossible.

She sits back up and turns back to their game as if she hadn't just been in his lap. As if hanging out with him like this with a complete disregard for personal space was more normal than breathing.

He doesn't know how she can do it. He's so horribly aware of everything, the way her hair moves when she laughs, the fact that smells of cherry lip gloss and gin, the fact that Logan has taken up some stupid vigil watching him and Mac from the opposite side of the couch.

Fuck did he know what a vigil was? Yeah he totally did. Man was hanging out with Mac making him smarter?

She's true to her word and after the third kill she stands up and stretches and he looks at Logan.

Just Logan because he will not get caught drooling over Mac. He just won't. Even if she's wearing that pretty soft looking blue sweater again. She's at the door before she says a word.

"I'll see you later..." She's not looking at him. In fact she is trying very hard to not look at him.

Fuck does she think that now that Logan's back he doesn't need her around? Doesn't want her?

"Yeah, you want that stupid tofu stir fry for lunch tomorrow?"

She looks up at him quickly and her eyes are wide and she's biting down a smile.

"Sure but stop trying to hide meat in it Dick. I swear I'm not going to die of malnutrition." She rolls her eyes and says goodbye to Logan.

The door is closed all of five seconds when Logan's mouth opens.

"So what's going on with you and Mac?"

He pushes up from the couch and moves to the kitchen, "I thought you wanted us to be friends?"

"Yeah...sure..."

He doesn't like the response.

* * *

"Dick! I told you to stop this." She spears the chicken ball with a chopstick and waves it around at him.

He's leaning against the filing cabinet he's sure she's never used.

"I don't want you to die on me Mac." He tells her seriously, he can see her visibly soften, he smirks and she quirks an eyebrow at him throwing the chicken ball into the garbage, "if you want to get your protein another way I'd be happy to help." He leans back in the wheely chair and starts unzipping his pants.

"Dick stop it." She laughs eating around the tainted noodles, "someone will see."

He loves and hates that it's never that she doesn't want to, that it's always because they aren't in the right place for it.

It's too bad these public displays are all he can manage with her. Shining moments of brash vulgar _Old Dick_ that makes her laugh.

He only ever makes her cry when he means it.

They chat about nothing, about how he's thinking of moving into the frat house this year, about when Parker's coming back to town, if Veronica and Logan will ever get back together.

They both think they will. It's like destiny or something. People who gravitate to each other like that, no one could hurt them like they do and that had to mean something. That there had to be something there that made it hurt so bad.

They are both quiet after that because no one can hurt him like she can and he wonders if she's thinking the same thing.

He takes her garbage and ruffles her hair as he leaves.

The sound of her laughter follows him to the elevator.

And he wants it to stay with him the rest of the day but almost as soon as the doors close his cell phone goes off.

"What?" He answers.

"That's how you answer your phone? What if I had been someone important?"

"Well your not so I guess we'll never know. What do you want?"

He rests his head against the wall of the elevator and just waits. No 'conversation' with his father has ended well and he doesn't expect it to change.

"Come to the club for drinks."

"I'm nineteen."

"That's never stopped you before." Is his reply. He doesn't know how to really respond to that, part of him is pissed because he should be his father, he should give a shit that he's been drinking. But every time he acts like a father it burns him because where was that concern when it fucking mattered.

"Fine." He hangs up and immediately goes to send a message to Mac.

He hasn't even left the building yet. God when did he get this pathetic.

He sends a message to Logan instead.

_Dick: old man wants drinks at the country club. Eat without me don't know how long this'll take_

_Logan: you want me to hit up the club in a couple hours?_

_Dick: naw I got this_

He doesn't but he should.

* * *

He opens the door to the suite on the third try. But whatever at least he's not trying to open the door with his car keys any more.

Not that he had them any more...stupid Hector totally fucking sharked him.

He let's himself into the room and makes a trumpet noise heralding his entrance.

He turns to see the living room and stops.

Mac's purse is by the couch. A can of cola and two bottles of beer on the coffee table, one open one sealed. There's a stack of dvd's on the table and take out containers.

She's here somewhere?

Why is she here?

She didn't know he was with his dad does she? He swears he didn't drunk dial her.

"Hello?" He calls into the room and Logan peaks his head out of the kitchenette thing and Mac appears at his side.

"Hey." She smiles up at him. She came from his room and it takes no time to see why. She's wearing his pi sigma sweater.

"What's this?" He asks pulling at the fabric at her collar. He can see down the sweater. Black bra. Fuck. He can feel blood rush away from important places, like his brain

She smirks and slaps his hand away, "Logan got soy sauce all over my shirt...he said it'd be okay..." Her eyes darken, "it's okay right?" She sounds nervous which is ridiculous because of course it's all right.

"It's fine." He taps her on the nose and a flush rushes into her cheeks but he's not sure why.

He plops himself down on the couch and picks up the stack of movies.

"Caddyshack." He announces and Mac swears and Logan starts laughing.

He comes out of the kitchen with his hand outstretched.

He raises his eyebrows as Mac hands over a fiver.

She sits down heavily next to him, arms crossed pouting.

"I thought you'd pick ghostbusters."

"We watched it last night."

"What! Logan! You cheating son of a bitch!" She basically throws herself over Dick to slam her fist into Logan's leg.

"Ow! Fuck Mac fine have your five bucks back spoil sport." He throws her money back at her and rubs his leg.

He let's out a long breath as Logan moves to put the movie in.

"What's wrong?" Mac asks pulling her legs up onto the couch.

He smiles at her in his fraternity sweater curling up next to him, "nothing." He tells her and fuck he actually means it.


	24. Coward

**Coward**

* * *

"So how's your girlfriend?" Logan asks from the couch as Dick walks back into the suite.

He'd been at Hearst trying to convince them that he was totally responsible now and could totally live in student housing this year.

In short it hadn't gone well.

No one but Mac thought he was an adult. So yeah he'd gone over to see her to bitch about the housing department or whatever the fuck they called themselves.

Her response was that if he couldn't remember what the department was called he couldn't bitch and gave him a cookie.

"She isn't my girlfriend." He tells him and tries pretty damn hard not to sound so put out by that fact.

"Yeah..." Logan moves to the arm of the couch and rests his chin in his hand, "but I can't figure out why."

Dick moves to the kitchen to grab a couple of beers, like he needs Logan treating him like a fucking discovery channel show.

"She has a boyfriend." He responds because he knows every other excuse he'll think of will sound like he's grasping at straws, trying not to sound like the desperate little bitch he probably is.

"She has a new boyfriend?" Logan asks twisting in his seat.

"No...she's dating Max, you should know that, she's _your_ friend."

"Right..." He hands Logan a beer and can't help but notice that he's not making eye contact any more.

"Logan..."

Logan is playing with his sleeves and sinking back down onto the couch proper.

"She hasn't been with Max since Mexico." Logan tells him quietly looking into the depths of his beer. Like not looking at him it's not some sort of breach of her trust or some shit.

"What..."

He's frozen or broken or something because his chest hurts and his lungs burn and he's not sure what he should be doing with his hands.

"Apparently he told her that if she went to Mexico to get you they were done."

Why hadn't she just told him. Why did she let him think there was this_ nerd wall_ between them? Did she not like him? No that was bullshit of course she did.

"I thought you knew man..." Logan looks up at him but he barely notices, he's trying to think of the last time she mentioned Max.

Mexico.

He'd just stopped bringing it up because he didn't like to call attention to the fact that she wasn't with him like she should be.

"Why didn't she say something..." He asks because apparently Logan is her super bestie.

"I don't know man you'll have to ask her."

He sets the beer down on the coffee table and pulls his keys out of his pocket.

"Fine."

* * *

She's where he left her. Her parents garage loading boxes for her move back into res.

"Why isn't Max helping you with this?" He asks from the open garage door.

Startled she looks up at him.

"Hey, you remember which department your mad at or did you just come back for another cookie?" She smiles up at him loading another box into her tiny car. She didn't answer the question.

"Why isn't Max helping you." He repeats and her smile drops.

"Why should he?" Is her vague response.

"Because he's your boyfriend." his voice is firm he's not leaving until he knows why she didn't tell him. He thought they were friends now, weren't you supposed to tell your friends when you broke up?

She looks straight at him like she's trying to judge his reaction, not good, "god so you know then."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because then you'd think we should be together."

"Because we should! We basically are." He points out and she turns away from him to grab another box. Like fracturing her attention will make this conversation less heavy.

"I don't think we should..."

The words hit him like a hammer, full on Peter Gabriel sledgehammer right into his chest.

"Why not." The words come out kind of broken and he hates himself. Why does she have this kind of power over him, why has she always had this kinda power.

She puts the box into the car and turns to him, her eyes are red. And he's glad because if she's going to stand there and destroy him he wants her to cry.

"All we are going to do is hurt each other Dick."

He opens his mouth to tell her _he'd never_ when he realises how stupid that is.

"And I know I can't have another Casablancas tear me down and come back from it. It'll wreck me. I barely survived the last time Dick. I just...I can't..."

"I'm not my brother Mac."

"Yeah and maybe that's the problem..."

"What the fuck are you talking about."

"I can't save him by saving you-" she wipes desperately at her face because she's crying now. Big fat silent tears and her body is shaking trying to contain herself.

He's amazed he can notice all that with this knife sticking out of his chest.

"Is that all I am?" His voice is too thick.

"I don't know-" she tells him, pushing the words out like they hurt and god he hopes they do, "but I'll always be worried that that's what this is. I mean aren't you?"

He wants to tell her no. He wants to tell her for being so fucking smart she's so fucking stupid sometimes.

Because its not.

Its not.

Its not right?

His silence is answer enough for her because a sob racks her body, the most upsetting noise he thinks he's ever heard.

taking care of her isn't about Beaver,_ its not_, it isn't about doing what he couldn't for her its about him.

"Its not about Beaver, its not Mac, it's about how you're the only person who makes me feel like its okay to be as messed up as I am. That we can be broken together and that's fine."

She looks up at him with big wet eyes and he knows its not romantic movie quality speech but he wants it to work so bad and that has to count for something.

She wipes her eyes again and she's trying to calm down, he can see the deep shaking breaths.

"But I don't want to be broken Dick." She tells him quietly and it sounds so big because he'd never even considered that.

Not once had he thought about how hard she had been trying to pull herself together and why shouldn't she be together, _he_ wasn't her blood, she doesn't need to carry _him_ with her forever.

This is why she kept her break up from him. Because she hadn't been thinking of all the amazing things they could do with each other, she hadn't been creating a fantasy life for them. She knew that it'd be over because she didn't have it in her to try again.

"So that's it then, its over, we're over."

"We were never actually together Dick."

"_Bullshit_. Just because you didn't call me your boyfriend out loud doesn't mean that I wasn't."

"I'm sorry." She tells him and she might actually mean it but what does that matter if she doesn't mean it enough to take it back.

Her eyes are red and there are tears on her face and he's so mad and not mad at all in the strangest way. Because he wants her to be wrong but he's not sure if she is or not.

He closes the distance between the and grabs a hold of her and her skin burns against his like it knows that this is the end.

"Dick what are you-"

He kisses her because he refuses to be this devastated over a girl and not have even kissed her.

She tastes of salt water and cherry lip gloss.

And the worst part of the kiss is that she kisses him back. Her arms wrap around him and her mouth moves against his and its rough and desperate and so fucking sad he doesn't know if he can stand it.

He pulls away and looks down at her.

"Cindy Mackenzie, you are a coward."

She looks down at the stained cement of the garage like she knows it's true.

He leaves and takes a cookie for his trouble.


	25. They never stay

**They never stay**

* * *

"So you're done then?" Logan asks from the door of his bathroom three days after the Mac implosion.

He's got his head on the seat of the toilet and a pillow somewhere...tub maybe?

"She made it pretty damn clear that there wasn't even a start man."

Logan softens like the big fucking marshmallow he is and gets him a glass of water from the tap.

He watches him slide down the wall and sit next to him, the fluffy hotel towel swings a little above his head.

"I meant with the vomit-fest but if you want to take about Mac that's cool."

"Its not my fault this time. You know that right?"

"I know man."

"Maybe if I had-"

"No man don't do that." Logan puts his hand on his shoulder and passes him the glass of water, "you can't do that. If you were better, if you were worse, don't for a second believe that shit man. Because they_ never_ stay. You're always wrong in some unfixable way."

Logan throws a soap at the mirror. It doesn't crack, the soap just makes a smudge on the pristine glass.

"You wanna talk about it man?"

"Talk about what?"

"About Ronnie not coming back?"

"How did you know..."

Dick inspects the water in the glass, "I read the text you got from Mac..."

"Oh..." He doesn't seem all that upset that he'd read his text message. He had just really wanted Mac to be texting him about how she was an idiot and how Logan thought she could get him to forgive her or something. Maybe Logan understood that better than anyone ever wanted to.

It had been a simple message.

_NYC will never be the same. V transferred to Columbia._

That was it. It had however made Logan's willingness to get smashed with him make more sense.

"Fuck em." He tells Logan downing the water and standing, fueled entirely by piss and vinegar, "what ever happened to easy gold diggers? I at least knew where I stood with them. Generally with them on their knees."

"We're better than that now." Logan tells him from the floor of the bathroom. They sure don't look like their better than that.

"I don't ever want to be better than easy chicks again Logan. This-" he points at his chest, and then at the general area of the bathroom, "this hurts and I won't do it again."

He leaves the bathroom stepping over Logan's too god damn long legs and pulls off his shirt. It smells of stale beer and gin. Which is weird because he didn't remember the gin. But whatever not a first and so obviously not the last.

"Where are you going?" Logan asks finally pulling himself up from the bathroom floor.

If he had thought that he was just going to sit there on the cold bathroom floor smelling of a bad night and talk about his fucking feelings Logan was in a worse place than he thought.

"I'm going to the _welcome back to drinking on your parents/governments dime party._"

He was going to detox the kryptonite that was Cindy Mackenzie. And he was going to do it with nervous freshman girls that didn't know his last name, didn't know his trauma, and didn't taste of salt and cherry fucking lip gloss.

Logan tags along and he has a feeling its entirely so Dick doesn't end up in a brawl alone. Because even he recognises that he's volatile which must mean he's some baking soda away from a science fair volcano.

* * *

"What the _fuck_ is she doing here?" He yells over the thumping music and he can see Logan looking around the room for Mac, because what other_ she_ could it be.

She's standing at the far end of the living room, trying desperately to melt into the wall. She's never really been about parties. All the bodies make her nervous. she has her eyes scanning the crowd no doubt looking for whoever dragged her to a pi sigma party he figures whoever did it, did it because they wanted to have fun rather than solving some crime. That must have been a nice break from the norm for her.

She locks eyes with him.

Eyes wide and she moves quickly away from the wall, in the opposite direction. She's fucking running from him.

Suits him just fine.

"Parker and Wallace." Logan yells back pointing over the way Mac had gone. They were indeed leaning causally against the wall. Red cups in hand talking about who gives a shit.

They had probably dragged her out, thinking she'd done zero socializing since her mysterious break up with Max. What had she told them? Nothing probably.

Coward. He hoped she healed crooked.

* * *

He chats up a tall blonde freshman. She's going to rush Theta, but the best thing about her is she's only a couple feet from where Mac is standing.

He guesses that the fact that she's into him is also good but better than the fact that she starts kissing him is the look of devastation on Mac's face that she's trying to hide.

He makes sure that she sees him leave the party with the blonde. Sue or something. It doesn't really matter.

She lives in a dorm and they make out at random intervals on the way there, she doesn't taste right and every time she grabs onto him his stomach twists unhappily.

She tries to unlock the dorm with the wrong key and he takes the keys from her and does it himself. She tumbles into the room in a giggling mess.

He's not drunk enough for this damn it.

She's pretty and willing and it means nothing and that didn't used to be a problem. It used to be his fucking speciality.

* * *

"That was quick, out of practice?." Logan's voice rings out from the kitchen when he enters the suite.

"Shut up..."

"You put her to bed and left didn't you?"

"Shut up."

A smile spreads across Logan's face like he's proud of him and maybe he is.  
Logan hands him a beer and a bag of popcorn and they sit down on the couch to watch Predator. The suite is officially a romantic sub-plot free zone.


	26. Sophmore Year

**Sophmore Year**

* * *

He doesn't see her again for a month.

He's leaving a dorm room.

Another perfectly willing slut he did not have sex with.

She's holding onto an über wasted Parker by the belt loop and trying to unlock her door with her free hand.

"Dick." Parker says with a smile and a friendly hand gesture. Jazz hands.

He watches Mac stiffen.

_Say something._

_Say something._

_Why won't you say anything! This is your fault! We could be together if you weren't such a scared little..._

He's sure if he looks at her back any longer he'll burn a hole right through her.

"Hey Parker, have a good night?"

"I hate my Women's lit professor!" She yells out with an odd kind of joy that he's very familiar with. That is the drunken state he always aimed for and so rarely was rewarded with.

Mac hasn't turned around yet. She has the key in the lock but hasn't turned it. Frozen by his presence.

His insides fucking ache at the sight of her and he can feel the desperate grab of her fingers on his skin again, the press of her mouth, the fucking _taste_ of her.

How can one kiss from her be the best and the worst he's ever had.

He's so fucking tired of this already and Parker looks like she's about three random jazz hands away from completely passing out.

He crosses the narrow hall and wraps his hand around Mac's. He twists the key in the lock and pushes the door open.

"Good night Parker." He waits until they are both safely inside the dorm before he leaves.

He's at the end of the hall and he can swear he can hear her cry but it's probably his imagination.

Some sort of projection shit.

* * *

It takes him all of rush week before he has sex again. He's positive its the longest he's ever gone without sex.

Her name is Cindy and she's a brunette.

Yeah he knows its fucked up but he's been fucked up a long time so what does it really matter.

It feels good to say her name like that. A release or some shit.

He leaves right after. He has an ethics lecture and yeah the irony isn't exactly lost on him.

Opening the door hair a mess he stops stock still.

Mac.

In the hall, her arms wrapped around her laptop. She leans and he's sure she can see Cindy sitting on the bed sorting out her shirt. Not that the added visual is really needed the heavy smell of sex hangs on him.

She looks like she's going to be sick. Good. What? Did she think he was going to wait for her? Why wait for something that was so obviously not going to happen.

Her eyes get hard, that ancient I'm too good for you ice sharp, "stay _safe_." She tells him and the words just fucking cut.

He watches her walk away back straight but he can see that she's gripping her laptop too tight. He wants to say something. He wants to fucking hurt her because every time he sees her its like he's in the garage all over again and she's just ripping out the heart he just figured out how to use.

He opens his mouth, swear words and his brother and all the little things he knows about her springing to mind. Weapons he could use against her.

He closes his mouth and walks the other way.

Because maybe he really is better than that now.

* * *

He gets a sex-quest bingo that year.

The first one in a decade.

Every Cindy on the register, even the two faculty members.

Logan's journalism professor (he was pissed) and Parkers bitch of a woman's lit professor.

He tells Parker that he had her on the desk, and when the woman was passed out, naked over on the fancy mahogany thing he gave her paper a B.

He knows that she told Mac because the next time he see's her, the cafeteria, she looks a little broken as she tries not to let her shiny new boyfriend notice.

If he isn't yet he will be soon.

After all his last name isn't Casablancas and apparently that's the only important criteria.

* * *

He wins sex quest which means he's in the running for frat president when Chip graduates. It also means that he gets the corner room in the house.

Dick and Chip go to see the dean.

A fellow frat brother.

Dick's previous indiscretions seem to disappear once Chip tells the older man that he got a bingo.

He goes to break the news to Logan and finds Mac packing up her laptop when he gets to the suite.

"Oh shit-" Logan says from behind the couch.

Mac looks up at him and he wonders when he looks at her now if her eyes will always be those big sad things.

Maybe its regret in her eyes.

Its probably fucking allergies, Mac's whole body seemed to be made for somewhere else. Somewhere with less sun and trees and less outside.

Because if she regretted her decision she'd say something right?

She takes her laptop bag and leaves as quickly as possible, she brushes by him and she smells warm and familiar but she isn't any of those things any more.

She's not broken after all.

Whatever let her be fucking mended and boring.

The door slams shut and before Logan can get any words out he tells him he's moving into the frat house.

"What! Dick! Just because-" Logan follows him into his room, "its just that you're normally still at the frat house for another half an hour. Come on man don't leave just because of this."

Logan looks like he's full on about to have an abandonment melt down, his sleeves are down over his palms and his pacing a little.

Dick sits down heavily on the edge of the bed and looks at him.

"Dude stop pacing I'm just going to be living in the frat next year."

"Next year?"

"Yeah, you kinda have to when you're president."

"You're the next president?"

"Well not technically but no one whose ever gotten a sex quest bingo has ever run unsuccessfully before."

Logan laughs good naturedly and relaxes against the wall looking at him, "congrats. Should I call for champaign?"

Dick shrugs, "why not. None of that cheap shit."

Logan goes to leave the room but stops short, "I'm sorry you had to see her man."

"It's okay...I can't let her get to me forever."

"Huh," Logan smiles, "who knew you'd ever grow up into a proper man."

He rolls his eyes and throws a pillow at him, "go order champaign you dick, we apparently have lots to celebrate."


	27. True Lies

**True Lies**

* * *

He becomes Pi Sigma President.

It's not even a contest.

Fuckin laughable. With his Sex-Quest victory and his apparent natural charm he's president before he even campaigns.

Logan moves out of the hotel and buys a beach house that Dick keeps all his shit in. He basically plans on living with Logan until he dies.

Mac's been with the same guy for a year and a half, not that he has any idea. He has no idea that the guys parents run a fucking _farm. _And he has no idea that the kid, _Devon, _is a film major.

He's in his room, looking over his lecture notes, because that's apparently a thing he does now, when there's a knock at his door. It's probably Bandit. Again. He keeps telling him that a _Quake_ party is not a thing that's going to happen. Seriously who even still plays it and none of the sisters are going to know what the hell he's talking about.

He pushes his wheely chair over to the door and whips it open, "Bandit I swear if this is about..."

He stands so quickly that the chair topples over.

It's Mac.

He hasn't seen her in almost a full year and they haven't spoken since she'd basically told him to keep it wrapped.

"Mac..."

She's looking up at him with those damn big wet eyes of hers that just rip into him like everything between them had happened yesterday and not almost a full two years ago. She puts her hands on his shirt and pulls him down slowly and mesmerised he lets her. Watches her wet her lips and he can't help but wonder if she still tastes of cherry lip gloss, she moves forward quickly and proves that _yes_, she does.

His arms wrap around her and pull her up into the room. She kicks the door closed and he almost trips over the chair, her mouth moves against him rough and hot and wet and every move she makes echoes across his body.

The bed slams into the back of his knees and he falls backward onto the bed breaking the kiss.

"Mac..." he smiles up at her and he's afraid it's too soft, too telling, he's spent all this time trying to not care about her, and he'd been doing okay, he could be with other girls, hell he'd even had a couple of short-term girlfriends (one lasted a whole two weeks). but having her weight on him like this, the taste of her and cherry lip gloss on his tongue it was like it was that summer all over again, when she had been accidentally teaching him how to be a real person.

She sits up on him, straddling him and she pulls her shirt over her head and his heart fucking stops.

"Say you love me." she tells him and it's the first real sentence she'd said to him since the garage and he doesn't know what happened to her tonight but he knows he wants to fix it.

"Mac what happened?" He sits up and she comes to rest in his lap. He brushes her dark hair away from her pretty pale face, "Tell me what happened..." his fingers trace lines across her skin, her skin is warm and soft and feels amazing.

She shakes her head slightly, "tell me you love me, even if you don't mean it...please. I just...I need to hear it." her voice begs. he pulls her away from him so he can look her over.

"What the fuck happened Mac? I'm serious, are you okay? Did someone hurt you?" Her skin is unmarked. It's a span of tight soft cream and his body is reacting even though he wants to focus on the _why_.

She squirms in his lap and he knows she's doing it on purpose to try to make him forget that something is wrong. Something is so wrong that she came to _him_.

"You can't say it..." her voice is quiet and broken.

"I love you." he tells her quickly because she looks like she's going to cry if he doesn't, "I. love. you." he tells her tapping her on the nose with every word. Her body relaxes against him and a soft smile pulls across her face. Some sort of satisfaction, some validation that she can in fact be loved. That what happened tonight, whatever the fuck it was, was not her fault.

He kisses her and it's softer and he knows that this is something very different for her than it is for him but he's not sure he cares. In fact he's positive that he doesn't. Not right now, not when she's in his arms and willing and finally.

They can deal with all the other stuff in the morning.

He sets her down softly on his bed and she looks up at him and it's so easy to pretend that she loves him too.

because it isn't a lie.

he's pretty sure he's never said anything more true in his entire life.

he'll always be carrying this around for her in the core of him he's sure.

To the _fucking grave_.

For the first time in his entire life Richard Casablancas Junior makes love. And he absolutely understands why it's called that. It's a slow thing, like they have all the time in the world and when her hands are on his skin there's no desperation in the movements, it's a gentle feeling. He knows that everything else from now on will feel cheap and fucking tawdry because what he had with Mac was real.

At least for him.

When he wakes up in the morning she's gone and he's not at all surprised.

disappointed but not surprised.


	28. kryptonite: grad

**Kryptonite**

* * *

She graduates early, he wants to think its just because she's really smart, but its probably that she just wants out of here.

Needs out of here.

He hadn't seen her since that night. Not properly anyway, he'd seen her from across rooms and shit but it didn't really count. She had made it pretty clear by exiting every room that he entered that their night together had been just that _a _night. Singular.

He was glad she was leaving because it hurt to see her. he kept expecting her to show up at his door again and that was probably the worst thing. Because he knew that she wouldn't and part of him didn't want her to, didn't want anything in her life to go _that_ wrong that she would need him like that.

She was trying so hard to put herself back together and he swore he had the pieces to her puzzle but she didn't want them. So he'd been pushing them into his own puzzle, creating an entire three dimensional person with their help.

So maybe her leaving early was for the best.

She already had a job, the job offers had flooded in for her and he was kinda proud really.

He didn't however know where she was going. He'd been very careful to not know that. Because maybe if she was well and truly gone he could detox from her and not necessarily go back to the way he had been, he wasn't that stupid he knew there were no more bridges behind him, but to just not _hurt_.

Get her out of his system, or at the very least put her in a box, a little box at the back of him that he didn't have to look at everyday.

So he wouldn't feel so raw and broken all the damn time. Maybe she was right and broken wasn't the right place for either of them. They couldn't be frozen, they couldn't stay in that pocket of time and he knew that now.

Out there somewhere was a better place a place were maybe they could be whole... together.

He was waiting at her car. He's not sure why he's bothering maybe its that closure thing. Her car is packed and there's a paper map (from her parents probably) on the passenger seat of the west coast that he wishes he hadn't seen. He'd been imagining her jetting off to Norway or Sweden. Some place far away where they could both move on and forget that there was/is something between them that's too big for either of them to handle.

"Dick..." He looks up and she's a couple cars away looking panicked.

"Hey." He steps away from the car and holds out a box. Its small and he can see the fear flash across her face at the small velvet box.

"Chill its not a ring."

He's not asking her to marry him, he learned his lesson in Mexico.

She steps closer and takes the box being careful not to touch him.

She stands there and opens the box and she bites back a smile because she isn't supposed to be encouraging him.

"They're beautiful Dick."

Earrings.

Diamond solitaire, the only thing he could think of that she might accept.

She moves to the car and puts the box on the roof. He watches, his heart in his throat as she puts the earrings on.

He hadn't really expected her to accept his gift but maybe this was an end for her a good and proper end for the both of them because he was never going to see her again.

She leans down and looks at the earrings in her side mirror.

She's so god damn pretty he's sure that it isn't fair.

Standing she looks up at him a smile spreads across her face that's soft and warm and her eyes burn.

"Thank you." Its a whisper and it just fucking wrecks him because it sounds like _goodbye_.

He moves quickly partially so she doesn't have time to escape, partially so he doesn't have time to rethink this. Because its stupid and it'll only make things worse. He may not be stupid but he's never been accused of being smart either and it's so hard to push past his self serving nature when she's standing there looking at him like he's _special_ and _done._

A closed chapter.

His mouth is on hers and she's pinned against the car.

Her hands press against his chest and he's sure she wants him to stop but her fingers curl and pull him closer. She bites at him and he opens his mouth for her, he lets her deepen the kiss, lets her go her pace because they've always done things her way before and why shouldn't the end be any different.

His lungs burn and his skin feels like it's electric. Everywhere she touches lights up and he's putting all of this, the taste of her, that stupid cherry lip gloss of hers, the feel of her mouth and her tongue and her skin and the way his stomach feels bottomless and he's putting it in a small velvet box in him that's just for her.

He pulls away from her and leans against her, forehead to forehead, puffing for breath.

"I'm glad you're leaving." he tells her and watches her mouth twist unhappily, "you are made of Kryptonite Cindy and you just kill me."

He leans down and kisses her solidly and chastely on the mouth and steps back.

Her eyes are red and she's biting her lip to keep something in.

She takes a steadying breath and looks right at him, right_ into_ him, "don't you for one second think that you aren't made of it too Casablancas," She pushes away from the car door takes the box off the roof and starts her way around the front of the car off to start her new life. a life without him, and he has this terribly feeling in his gut that it's for the best this way.

* * *

**A/N:** don't worry guys. I'll see you tomorrow


	29. San Francisco

**San Francisco**

* * *

He's starting to wonder why he even bothers with this foreign investor crap.

_no good business man ever uses his own money._

Yeah sure but foreign investors are such a pain in the ass. He's always so hungover the next morning. He swears they won't put up a single dollar until he gets on that god damn karaoke stage.

At least the hotel restaurant is quiet and dimly light. like they knew just how much pain he was in.

He orders coffee, black.

Everything is that terrible empty quiet that he hates, but he'll let it slide because the coffee is good and he is in pain.

_tap tap tap tap tap tap_

Someone somewhere in the restaurant is typing like their life depends on it and he desperately wishes for the terrible quiet to return because every tap is slamming into his brain.

Gritting his teeth he searches the room for the horrible human being that would do such a terrible thing.

A women by the far window, a brunette typing furiously at a laptop a cup of coffee getting cold and a half eaten muffin behind her laptop forgotten.

Yeah she isn't going to stop any time soon and the sound is slamming into him like unforgiving waves and he is not for it.

He pushes himself up from the table and stalks over to her.

"I will pay you a thousand dollars to stop making that horrible noise." he tells her pulling out his wallet.

The woman laughs cruelly, "no. I was here first." she looks up at him and he drops his wallet.

"Mac?"

He thinks he's going vomit. it might be the hangover but he's pretty sure it isn't. He hasn't seen her in years and he'd been totally fine with that. Living with Logan and working and surfing and the occasional girlfriend. He didn't need this, he didn't want this. Not yet.

"Dick..." her voice is a scared whisper and it's horribly obvious that neither of them is prepared for this, for a chance meeting to just come along and slam right into them. He's chest feels tight, "umm did you want to sit down?" she asks shutting her laptop.

He bends down to pick up his wallet and sits down across from her.

He's not ready.

He's not ready for her.

He needed at least five more years, to make his own money, to buy his own house, to not want to vomit every time he saw kids at little league, to be properly mended.

He looks at her fingers, bare and he lets out a little sigh positive that he wouldn't be able to handle it if she'd gotten married.

"What are you doing in San Francisco?" she asks and it pulls his attention up to her face, her hair's shorter now and he can see diamonds sparkling in her ears.

_holy fuck_ are those.

yeah.

he's sure those are the earrings he gave her.

"Foreign investors." he tells her simply taking her coffee and lifting it to his mouth. It's not as cold as he expected, lukewarm and desperately black and exactly what he needs. She just smirks at him as he drains her cup.

"You have to get them drunk to go in on your business model?"

"Well it certainly helps."

god her voice just fucking hurts, he hadn't realised how much he just missed her being in the fucking room before.

"So you've been in San Francisco all this time?"

less than five hours away.

she'd been less than five hours away for this long?

this whole time?

fuck he'd been in San Fransico five times before now...once with a girlfriend.

"Yeah I'm a little surprised I haven't seen you until now." she bites her lip and fuck is she checking his hands?

"How long are you in town?" she asks and he swears that there's a nervous shake to her voice.

He shrugs, he'd been planing to leave as soon as his head didn't throb, once he was sure he could operate his car, Logan's expecting him home for dinner, "tonight." he tells her rubbing his eyes because god he wants her to take him somewhere, to just spend time in her company because no one makes him feel real like she does, and it hurts but it's the best feeling all at the same time.

She puts her laptop into her bag and leaves some bills on the table, she's staring at the table and he's staring at her mouth. After all these years does she taste the same?

"I have to go to the office...did you want to come with me?" she asks and she looks like she thinks he'll say no.

after all she'd been less than five hours away all this time and he hadn't come for her.

"You have a real office now?" he asks and he can't keep the suggestive nature out of his tone.

She stands up and looks down at him, "yes, it has a view...and a _desk_ and a _door._" she smirks down at him and starts out of the restaurant he throws down a bill with his abandoned coffee and follows her out of the hotel.

He doesn't even mind the blaring sun all that much.

* * *

He closes the door tightly behind him, the office is still buzzing with people and it was hard not to notice the looks they were giving him as he followed Mac through the floor. He's pretty sure that none of them have ever seen anyone as classically handsome as him in real life before.

Mac is uploading something onto something or other. He walks over to the desk and puts his weight on the corner, he doesn't want the desk to give out or anything.

"What are you doing?" she asks a laugh in her throat and the tone warms his skin.

"Well I don't want it to collapse."

"Collapse?" she raises an eyebrow, "just what do you expect to be doing on my desk that you're worried about its structural limitations?" the way her mouth is pulled to the side he's sure she knows exactly what he expects to do.

He moves around the desk and grabs a hold of her. pulling her close he kisses her, cherry.

Fuck it feels like he's going to die, her arms wrapping around his neck, fingers in his hair.

He sits her on her desk, settling between her legs.

he pulls away from her heart slamming into his ribs, lungs burning.

"anything on this desk I can't replace?" he asks his voice dark and she looks behind her takes a quick inventory and shakes her head, "good." he sweeps the desk and pushes her back onto the desk.

She's laying on the desk in front of him and god it's the best thing he's seen in years. flushed skin and chest heaving, legs on either side of him, her skirt up around her waist.

She wants him and he's not sure if it extends much beyond this but this'll last him a while. He leans down undoing his belt and unzipping his pants and kissing her.

She makes the exact same noise as she did years ago.

"Did you want me to come after you?" he asks her gasping for breath because she feels amazing, better than anyone else.

"no." she tells him and her voice is broken by a moan, "yes, maybe, shut up."

* * *

He stays three days longer than he was supposed to and she puts her new cell number into his phone under _San Francisco_ and promises that she'll call and he promises that he'll see her every time he's in town.

Because he's not ready for a_ forever_ but he's not ready to give her up again.


	30. Trips upstate

**Trips Up State**

* * *

"A call would have been nice." Logan tells him, leaning in his doorway watching him unpack.

"I'm sorry I didn't realise we were married."

"Three days man. I could have placed a missing persons report."

He stands up straight and holds out his arms, "Look at me man, all here, I'm fine."

Logan narrows his eyes like he's trying to determine something by the way he's holding himself or what he's wearing or something.

"What?"

"You look good... did something happen?"

Dick rolls his eyes and goes back to unpacking, "not really, I got wasted and sang karaoke."

"Again? Did they make you duet _Islands in the stream_ again?"

"No..."

"Did you have to be Dolly again?"

"_No_"

Logan snickers behind him but there is no way that he can wreck this feeling. He's fucking invincible, he's got her new phone number and an open invitation. She hadn't run out of the room, and the smell of her skin was still on him from that morning.

He'd slept at her apartment and there was something so big about being invited into her home, something important he knew, something closer to a commitment than they had ever been able to lock down before.

He just had to figure out how long he had to wait before he could go back without looking like a needy little bitch.

* * *

A couple weeks later he arrives at her door an overnight bag in his hand.

"Oh? Hey you're early." she smiles and opens the door wider for him to come in. She's wearing an apron and he thinks she has cake batter on her face, heels and a fucking cocktail dress.

He's walked into a 1950's fantasy. Not that he's ever had one of those before.

He's suddenly very pleased with his suit, he'd pulled together a board meeting in the bay area so he could see her.

"Hey." he steps into the apartment and the whole place smells of food. He'd assumed they would go out to dinner, or order in or something.

He's sure that he's never had anyone make him dinner before that wasn't paid to do so, except maybe Cass when he got sick of pizza and thai.

"Are you making dinner?" he asks leaning against the island as she checks the oven. She bends down and he bites his lip because she is giving him very strong pants feelings.

"I bought it at the market down the street but I haven't cooked meat in like a decade." she looks back at him her face scrunched up displeased that she has to deal with meat at all, "I was making a cake too."

She sure was, there is a bowl of batter on the counter.

"Can I taste the batter?" he asks, she shrugs.

"It's just cake batter, go ahead."

He moves around the island and grabs her waist, pulling her back against him.

"What are you doing?"

"You said I could taste the batter."

"Yeah it's on the counter." she looks back at him and he leans down and licks the cake batter off her cheek.

He pushes her slightly toward the island until she's partially bent over it, his hands running up the back of her legs and up under her dress.

_no underwear_

_fuck_

"bad girl." he whispers darkly in her ear enjoying the little gasps she makes, and her hands slipping on the granite. He wants to eat the meal she's made for him, he wants to taste the care and the effort she put into it but her skin is just all together too appealing.

"Dick the oven..." she gasps out.

"It'll wait."

It doesn't.

They end up having to stop half way through because the smoke alarm goes off because apparently the oven did not appreciate taking a back seat to more carnal appetites.

* * *

He's in town a month later and she takes him to an art gallery opening.

"I'm starting to think you just like me because I'm good arm candy." he smirks down at her and tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear. His fingers rubbing briefly over the diamond earrings.

She wears them a lot.

He should know he's facebook stalking her when he's not in town. He wonders if she cares enough to do the same.

"Well not _just_ that." she smiles up at him and it bright and suggestive and she doesn't have to say any more. He knows what that smile means.

She likes him for the sex. he just prays that's not all.

It wouldn't be a horrible life if they were just _fuck buddies_ but he knows he can't let it _just_ be that. Not forever.

Her smile drops and he's sure that those thoughts must have flashed across his face, "what's the matter?"

He pulls her over to a darkened corner, "that's not all right?" he asks biting his lip and looking down at her.

"What's not all?" He's not sure if she's playing dumb or if this is really coming out of left field for her.

"the sex and the pretty face, that's not everything you like right."

"Dick..." she sighs and rolls her eyes, "for someone with an ego as big as you, you sure can be self conscious." she pats his face and walks away,

what the fuck was that supposed to mean?

was that a_ yeah your just a sex toy to me, just a pretty face and a good occasional lay?_

_What the fuck!_

"Dick, come here." she waves him over to where she's talking with a blonde woman.

He pushes his hair out of his face and moves to her side. like a good boy. god.

"Martha this is Dick."

"Hey." he nods and receives an elbow in his ribs.

"Martha is my boss, this is her sons show." He takes her hand respectfully and shows just how polite he can be. A skill he'd used to get himself out of several foreign boarding school threats. He was pro catholic knee socks not so pro on all boys schools in the fucking alps. He hated skiing.

"Ahh so this is the boy your seeing from out of town." she smiles kindly, her skin flushing slightly, "He is quiet the looker." the women smiles secretively at Mac.

A small smile pushes into Mac's face.

She's told people that she's _seeing him, _that's like dating right? His heart is thumping against his ribs and he feels kinda warm and light and fucking awesome because it's certainly progress. He lets her drag him along for the rest of the night and he makes happy chit chat with anyone she talks to.

* * *

_I hate office parties_

It's Mac, she's been texting him irregularly for a month. He hasn't been able to think up a reason to go up to see her again yet that hasn't been absolutely ridiculous and transparent.

_I love office parties_

He's not sure if he's fishing for an invite or not, the answer is true, he does love office parties but he never gets to go to any any more. You kind of need an office for that he can't even be Logan's plus one any more since he realised he was rich and didn't need that _god damn corporate bullshit creativity stifling office shit. _He'd fucked so many of Logan's co-workers...not that he could really tell Mac that... he knew she knew that he hadn't taken a vow or anything when she left but he figured it probably wasn't the best move to tell her about all the strange he'd gotten at office parties.

It's a full ten minutes before the next message comes over.

_Did you want to go?_

Yes of course he does. Since when does he ever _not_ want to go to a party. And how could he not want to go to an office party with Mac where she has to keep introducing him as the guy she's seeing. Maybe she'd slip up and call him her boyfriend.

he could live with that.

_I mean you don't have to if you're busy or don't want to it's just i thought since you love them so much you might be able to show me what's so good about office parties._

he'd taken too long to respond and she'd freaked out thinking he didn't want to go with her.

_I'll go with you._

He puts it into his phone as SF-Party.

He has this weird feeling that Logan's getting kind of paranoid about all his trips up state and Mac is skiddish enough as it is.

He tosses his overnight bag into the back of his sports car the day of the party.

"Where ya going?" Logan asks from the garage steps a bottle of beer in one hand.

"Up state."

"Again?"

"Yeah."

"You got a wife up there or something? A secret family you hiding from me?"

"I'm not hiding anything man. You're being paranoid."

Logan runs a hand through his hair and fuck his sleeves are up to his knuckles, he always pulls his sleeves way down when he's worried or sad. He lets out a long sigh.

"Look man there's a girl, but it's not serious."

"Not serious? You go up there every month? I've seen you move meetings up to the bay area even though they would be way easier just to teleconference. Something you used to do in your fucking underwear with a beer in the hand they couldn't see."

"Okay look, one of us thinks it's serious and it isn't her okay? Can we not talk about this? Like ever again?"

Logan lifts his hands in surrender his mouth is slack. He's probably surprised that his boy has those ever elusive feelings again.

It's not so much _again_ as it is _still_.

"When do I get to meet her?" he just laughs and gets in the car.

"I'll be back tomorrow night." he yells out the window as he drives away because apparently Logan is getting lonely. Dude should get a girlfriend.

The party's dull, but Mac's dress is fucking slamming.

He spends a fair amount of time drinking scotch with some of the men in her office, talking about office gossip. Apparently word got out about his little structural test of Mac's desk. He could see it in their eyes that they were jealous and he was fucking basking in it. He looses sight of her for like an hour and she comes back from somewhere and stumbles into him.

"Hey there hot stuff." she smiles wrapping her arms around him.

She's fucking hammered.

"Hey there drunkie." she giggles and puts her hands in his jacket pockets, "Okay fella's looks like someone has to take someone home." he nods to the guys at the bar, sets his glass down and sweeps her up into his arms.

She squeaks in surprise but latches onto his lapels.

He manages to get her into her apartment without having to put her down which is great because she passed out sometime during the cab ride.

He sets her down on her bed and takes off the fancy dress, putting it back on the hanger on the back of her bedroom door. She's wearing fancy underwear and he swears as he unhooks her garters (fuck he loves those) and stuffs her carefully into his fraternity sweater.

Something he was careful to leave here for her.

He gather's up all her pillows and creates the same set up for her that she had made for him a million years ago.

He leans down and kisses her forehead. He finds he doesn't even mind all that much not being able to be intimate with her this trip because taking care of her like this fills up a completely different part of him that had been empty for a long time. It's a different kind of intimacy he didn't even know existed but that was so often the case with the things Mac made him feel.


	31. House Tour

**House Tour**

* * *

_stay here. _

He's sitting on the couch with Logan watching a surf competition and he's been having the worlds slowest text conversation with Mac.

She has to come to town for a work something or other, he didn't ask too much about it, he doesn't understand what she does anyway.

He does however want her to stay with him instead of her parents.

_oh yeah. That'll be great. Oh hey Logan long time no see oh by the way I'm fucking your boyfriend no big deal don't read too much into it_

_it'll be fine._

_he's a gossipy drama queen._

_i thought you liked Logan?_ he looks up at Logan whose focus is on the tv. He is a gossipy drama queen...but he wants to tell Logan.

He hates not telling Logan things. God maybe he is his boyfriend.

A beep returns his attention to his phone.

_i do like him but that doesn't mean he's not a gossipy drama queen._

_what if I get him out of the house?_

_i don't know Dick..._

_you don't want to stay with me._

He's not as surprised as he'd like. Everything is always her pace, her place, staying here with him would give him more control of the situation. Something she didn't like to let go of. He knew her that well at least.

Ugh he needed a beer.

He drops his phone onto the coffee table and wanders away into the kitchen.

He probably shouldn't have left his phone in the living room with Logan...

Nah...he wouldn't invade his privacy like that. He'd invade Logan's privacy but it was a commonly known fact that Logan was a better person than he was.

Even if he was a bit of a drama vampire.

He sits back on the couch. His phone is in exactly the same place, and hands Logan a beer.

"I was thinking of how good the surf in Mexico must be right now."

"Oh man probably amazing."

"Yeah...I was thinking I'd go for a couple days, you want to come?"

Dick just about drops his beer.

"Uh no. No thanks." He's looking down at his phone, "work stuff." He tells him.

Lie!

It basically screams lie! Dick has never put work before good waves in his entire life. He cancelled a fucking launch party for post hurricane waves and Logan knows that better than anyone because he made Logan come with him.

Don't ask about it

Don't ask about it

Don't ask.

"Next time man." He shrugs.

_he's gone. Stay with me._

He stares at the words stay with me and hates how pathetic and accurate they feel.

_okay._

* * *

She pulls up in a rental car about an hour after Logan left.

She pulls out a small suitcase and a laptop case and she looks different but he's not sure why.

She seems smaller than usual. It's probably nothing.

"You find it okay?"

"It's not exactly the first time I've wandered into 09er territory before Dick." She smirks and let's him take her suitcase.

Oh god that's it isn't it.

He's 09er and she's not but it had never mattered to her before with Beaver.

Maybe being in town, in this part of town reminded her of his brother.

God what had he done. Great way to get the girl. Remind her of how fucking broken you'd both been...are?

"You going to show me where I'm sleeping or what? Going to give me the tour?" She pokes him in the chest.

"In a second." He puts her suitcase on the floor and pushes her up against the door.

"What are you doing Dick?" She asks eyes wide.

He crashes his mouth onto hers and presses his hands against her skin. He's not sure exactly what he's doing but he wants her to feel him.

Just him.

Her arms wrap around him and pull him down close.

Maybe he doesn't need to reinforce anything because she sure as hell feels like she's there for him.

He fucks her in the front hallway.

Half naked on the cold tile looking down at her he waves his arm across the space.

"So this is the hallway."

She snickers and the feeling is amazing against his chest. She looks up at him from her resting place on his chest and her eyes are so big and amazing and a smirk is pulling across her face.

"Is this what the tours going to be like Dick?"

"Maybe." He taps her on the nose and her skin flushes like it always does. Like its an adorable button or something.

The tour is exactly like that with the exception of the kitchen and Logan's room. He'd never forgive him and he has this weird feeling that he'd just know.

* * *

They have a dinner of soy milk and cereal and sit on the couch watching Mortal Combat of all things.

It feels like that summer, just the two of them watching crap movies and playing video games and talking about nothing.

He wants everyday to end like this, its this heavy warm thing and it feels so much bigger than it probably should.

She goes to bed earlier than he'd normally go and when he makes fun of her for it she reminds him that she actually has to go to work tomorrow like a normal person.

He watches her get ready for bed,

Something he's seen before in San Francisco but he likes seeing it here.

In his house.

In a place that is so easy to push and pull into _their_ house.

"Why are you watching me brush my teeth?" she asks around the brush, toothpaste foaming around the words.

he shrugs and reaches out and pushes a few stray strands from the toothpaste danger zone.

She just rolls her eyes and turns away from him to spit into the sink.

"You know you don't have to go to bed with me right?" she walks past him to his bed and starts pulling her shirt over her head.

"Why wouldn't I go to bed with you?" he tosses his shirt across the room into the closet, right in the hamper Logan makes him use.

"Cause it's ten and you just called me an old lady for going to bed at ten?" she chucks her shirt across the room in the other direction, it lands just short of her suitcase. He'd told her she could use a drawer if she wanted, she apparently didn't. Having a drawer in Dick Casablancas' room was apparently just too much for her to handle. Fucking on the dinning room table totally fine, some sort of domestic familiarity thou was off limits.

"meh." he turns off the light and gets in bed next to her he pulls her tight against his body and plants a kiss in her hair.

"Are you trying to have sex with me?" she asks and he can see her raise an eyebrow in the dark.

"No."

It's true. He's fucking spent, an entire afternoon of the house-sex tour had him actually pretty tired.

"You'll be here when I wake up right?" he asks quietly.

"Of course I am." she laughs a little and it's a throaty noise that vibrates through him after a long moment of silence she speaks again, "I'm not that person any more Dick."

"swear?" he picks up her hand and pushes her fingers down.

her laughter bursts out of her like a shot, her body shaking the bed and the sound is so great he almost forgets to ask what's so funny.

"Dick that's the _shocker_ not the boy scout thing."

"It not the same thing?"

"No."

"Oh man I just lost so much respect for the boy scouts."


	32. Domestic Issues

**Domestic Issues**

* * *

She's there when he wakes up.

Or rather when she wakes him up.

"What's going on? Are we on fire?" He asks sitting up in bed bleary eyed and panicked.

Mac is kneeling on the bed beside him in a button up and one of those librarian skirts he likes.

"I'm leaving." She tells him her fingers brushing away some hair, "you sleep like the dead." She tells him with a laugh, "I was going to just let you sleep but..."

Then she would have been gone when he woke up and she swore she wouldn't do that. He hoped ever again but he'd accept this trip.

One step at a time Dick.

"Seriously I've been trying to wake you up for an hour are you sick or something?" She put the back of her hand to his forehead and a look of concentration passes across her face as she tries to determine if he has a fever or not.

God.

He could get used to that. That causal domestic concern like it was just absolutely natural for her to give a shit if he was sick.

"I'm fine." He wraps his fingers around her wrist and pulls her down onto the bed, "want me to prove it?" He asks before he kisses her.

She tastes of toothpaste and coffee.

She pushes him away, "Dick I'll be late." She tells him what is probably supposed to be sternly but she's smiling so the tone isn't right.

"When'll you be back?" He asks watching her straighten her clothes.

"7-ish?" She shrugs, "depends on how smoothly this goes."

She kisses him goodbye. Quick on the cheek and then jumps out of the way of his arms.

* * *

The house has a horrible quiet to it when she's gone. He turns on radios in random rooms and sits down at the island looking at his phone.

He puts his head on the counter and dials the phone.

"Hey."

"Hey?" Logan's voice comes across the line and he can feel his nerves untangle, "you okay?"

"Yeah... How are the waves?"

"Uh...good?"

"You're not in mexico are you?"

"No."

"You looked at my phone didn't you?"

"...yeah."

"If I find out _the call came from inside the house_ I will kick your ass."

"Dude chill I'm in LA with Luke and Sean."

Dick looks up at the stove, "okay...so umm...how do I use the oven?"

Logan chokes on something and covers the mouth piece. He can hear laughter and he just knows that Logan has told everyone he's with about the fact that he doesn't know how to use an oven.

"You know what man, fuck you." He hangs up and tosses the phone off to the side.

Whatever it can't be that hard he's seen Logan do it a thousand times and he's watched god knows how many hours of the food network.

He's got this.

* * *

He doesn't got this.

When Mac comes into the kitchen she almost drops her laptop. The place looks like it fucking exploded.

In fact it kind of had.

Sauce had burst from the pot like a god damn face hugger and it's all over his shirt and in his hair and on the ceiling and there is water all over the floor and burnt pasta in the sink plastered to the sides of a pot with a burnt out bottom.

The whole room smells of smoke. Probably the whole house.

"Hey." He greets her standing in the middle of the mess and she's biting down a smile.

She moves into the kitchen sets a pot lid on top of the flaming element and turns the whole traitorous thing off.

"Hey." She returns dropping tea towels onto the wet floor, "how was your day?"

"I don't know how to use the kitchen." He tells her and he expects her to laugh and make fun of him like Logan had.

"You sure can't." She smiles softly up at him and grabs a hold of his stained shirt.

He leans back, "don't I'm a mess."

She smirks, "you sure are." She leans up and kisses him.

He forgets about the red sauce all over his hands and grabs her. She's smiling against his mouth.

"We should move." He tells her quietly moving a fraction away from her mouth.

"Uh huh." She agrees but she just moves forward and presses against him.

Her shoe gets tangled in the tea towel and she slams against his chest her legs somewhere too far behind her to be of any use.

He makes a surprised noise and slips in the water on the floor.

They smash to the wet ground her on top of him no longer connected.

"Oh my god! Are you okay?" She asks crawling up his body to put her hands on his head, "I can't tell if its blood or pasta sauce in your hair!" She exclaims.

He pushes himself up so that he's resting against a counter.

He puts one of her stained fingers into his mouth.

"Sauce."

She laughs and rests her head against his chest, "you are never allowed in a kitchen unsupervised again."

* * *

They have cereal for dinner again, he offered to take her out but she didn't want to.

He's positive she's worried someone would see them together. Someone that knows them, knows _him_ and that will make what they're doing so much more real.

Not just sex and good company but an honest to god_ relationship_ and she had looked afraid and he tried not to look hurt and has no idea if he managed or not.

He figures that she's totally fine with a _them_ as long as the eyes that see it aren't seeing anything, _anyone_ else. Which means they can never be together here because it'll always be about Cass, even when it isn't.

He's not going to bring it up.

That's a conversation for a much later date.

They are both so good at running away after all and if he losses her again he has a feeling that it'll be for good. Not a temporary thing like he let himself believe last time but a forever kind of thing. There was no amount of mending and growing up that would be able to justify her return.

He looks across the bedroom at her, she's sitting on his bed looking at him and he can see it now. How she's so much smaller here, _why_ she's so much smaller here.

He kisses her hard before climbing into the bed with her but there's a ghost in the bed between them and he wonders if she always feels that.

Reaching across the void he taps her on the nose and he can just feel her relax. The blankets shift and her body gets closer. He reaches out and puts a hand on her, palm flat against her hot skin.

"You have to go back?"

The silence in the air just fucking cuts.

"You could come with me..." she whispers and he's not sure he's heard her correctly. Did he just imagine that?

"What?"

"Nothing." she tells him and her voice is sleepy and even.

maybe he did imagine it. He couldn't go with her anyway. Not forever. He can't leave Logan like that without a reason and he just knows it would wreck him.

God why is everyone he cares about so god damn broken. Even after all this time, after all the mending and pulling together and fucking growing up they are all such broken _children_.

"You'll come back right, I promise not to cook."

She rolls over and has a hand on his face, she's smiling softly, "Yes." she kisses him and her fingers push into his skin and she's urging him over and who is he to deny the women he loves.


	33. Ashamed

**Ashamed**

* * *

She's back a few months later. He mentions that Logan's going to LA to see his almost maybe girlfriend and all of a sudden there's a conference at Kane Software she can't get out of.

He's sure she makes it up to come see him and it feels amazing and hollow all at once.

_Just say you want to see him. Don't make excuses...just...just want to be with him._

But who is he to ask for that when he can't do the same either. The last three 'board-meetings' were him checking out a surf shop in the bay area.

What? He met boards.

God the honesty is just too much.

"Can you cut up half that block of tofu?" She asks doing something or other to something on the stove. He's been banished to prep and every time he picks up a knife she's got hawk eyes on him.

He spends more time poking the white block and watching it jiggle unnaturally than he spends cutting it.

"Food shouldn't jiggle." He tells her firmly and she smirks and takes the cut protein and tosses it into a frying pan.

"Jello jiggles."

"Jello isn't a food its a booze delivery system."

Her soft laughter fills up the room and its warm and coats his insides.

_This._

This was what it was about. These were the times when he's sure he's her boyfriend and not just a fuck buddy. Something solid and lasting and real.

Would you care about how a fuck buddy held a knife to cut vegetables? Or if they knew how to use a stove?

No he's pretty sure you throw a protein shake and a power bar at them and then fuck.

In fact he's done that before.

Cooking with Mac is way more effective and clean then alone and they actually end up with a proper dinner and not just shoveling cereal into their mouths while watching movies.

They use the dinning room table and everything.

He claims it as a victory.

* * *

_I don't know why Logan can't know_

Or why no one can know at all.

Why is it such a big secret?

He's met her entire office for fuck sakes.

Logan's family. He shouldn't have to keep her identity a secret like he's dating superman or some shit.

_It's just easier this way_

Is her reply after what feels like an eternity.

_So I guess I shouldn't bother inviting you to the party this week_

It's his birthday and he wants her there, he wants her to be there as his girlfriend. Show off his hot smart girlfriend. But that's asking too much because she only ever see's him in Neptune when no one's around and while he can appreciate the alone time with her it's starting to gnaw at him after all these months.

He doesn't bring up the party again and he doesn't mention what the party is for.

She doesn't ask.

* * *

The party is in full swing, the house is packed, he's pretty sure he only actually knows a third of the people who have packed themselves into the bacchanalia that is a Casablancas-Echolls party and he can't really blame the other two-thirds. If he hadn't been invited he would have crashed too.

He leaves the kitchen, his blood more alcohol than plasma he's sure and stumbles down a hall.

He's not sure where he's going.

Bathroom maybe?

To find Logan?

The hallway is shockingly empty, considering the rest of the party is spilling out onto the beach.

His bedroom door is open.

He could have sworn he closed that...he didn't want strangers fucking on his sheets.

He pushes the door open.

"Hey asshole get out of my room." he growls

The person in his room turns from the bed and smiles. He sobers considerably and pushes the door closed with a bat of his hand.

"Mac?"

"Hey..."

"I thought you...what are you doing here?" he closes the distance between them and walks around her. He reaches out a hand and pushes against her shoulder. Yep she's solid.

She runs a hand through her hair and looks up at him, "I remembered it was your birthday... it's okay that I'm here right?" she asks not looking at him and yeah, yeah it's okay.

"It's cool..." he smiles softly down at her a hand moving to push at her hair, to feel her hot skin, "did you want to go to the party?" he asks and he already knows the answer but he'll keep trying until he can't any more.

He watches her shift under his gaze. She doesn't but she doesn't want to say anything. Her hands start to unbutton her jacket like that's her answer.

Sex is always her answer.

Which for the most part is totally cool with him but he has this feeling in his gut that it means something very different to them both.

She looks up at him through her lashes and the smirk on her face is fucking deadly, "I was hoping to give you your birthday present..." she opens her coat and shows the black lace and silk hidden beneath it, it's all black on cream skin and fuck...

"god you're hot..."

Her smirk pulls into a genuine smile at that, wide and half laughing and he loves it.

He looks up and can see someone in the not as closed as he thought door. He pulls her jacket closed and marches to the door.

Logan.

"What the fuck man. Not cool."

"Come on man it's your fucking party." Logan gestures to the house behind him and right now he couldn't give a flying fuck about those people. Hell he doesn't even give a stationary fuck.

"Don't care. I'm done."

Logan is trying to peak around him but he's keeping the door close to his shoulder.

"Oh come on man I got you fancy cake." Logan looks down at his hands.

fuck why is he such a marshmallow.

He turns to look at her. She's sitting on his bed a laptop at her side.

"Go ahead I brought some work to do." she waves him away, "bring me a piece of cake?"

He nods and closing the door tight behind him rejoins the party.

"So that's you're girl?"

"Yeah..."

"She's shorter and less blonde than I thought she'd be..."

"Oh?"

"So..." Logan smirks, "You ashamed of her or she ashamed of you?" he asks with a laugh but it rings all too true in him because isn't that what's going on here? She's ashamed of him, ashamed of their past, ashamed of _him_.

"She's ashamed of me." he answers darkly causing Logan to come to a stop in the hallway. Clearly he wants to discuss this, which is too bad because he's just here for the cake.

He takes a large chunk of the cake and two forks and passes Logan in the hall.

"Dude I didn't mean-"

He's not sure what he doesn't mean, didn't mean to spy, didn't mean to pry into his relationship, didn't mean that he should just take the cake and go. Probably all of it but he's on a mission, he's going to go eat what looks like an amazing cake with his _girlfriend, _and enjoy her present until he forgets that she's ashamed of him.


	34. The shoe drops

**THE SHOE DROPS**

* * *

The thing about seeing her in Neptune is that its pretty much just sex.

Not that that's bad per say.

Sex with Mac is always amazing. He's sure because he actually cares about her and stuff.

But the relationship is limited by what is so obviously her fear of having anyone they know see them together.

In San Francisco its this so much bigger _real_ relationship thing. They go out and see things and people and are real and she has no problem with it.

But here...

"You're sure you don't want to go out to dinner?"

"I'm sure." She basically purrs climbing off the couch.

"There's nothing to eat in the house. " He reminds her, she just drops to her knees in front of him.

"I think there's plenty. " Her hot hands are on his belt and zipper and...what the hell was he talking about?

* * *

Ok so she's a lot smarter than him. Yeah he gets it but she is not going to distract him with a blow job this visit.

Although it was really good...

No!

He's got this. They are going to have an adult discussion about why she doesn't want to leave the house with him.

They are going to move forward and she's going to deal and is she wearing garters...

_Fuck he loves those._

* * *

The next time she's down he suggests they go out again. He's been asking her out every trip but the first. The answer is always the same.

I'd rather stay here and have sex with you.

Said in varying formats.

This time he rips her nylons and her shirt has significantly less buttons. He's mad at her and she must be able to tell because when she slams back against the wall he doesn't put his hand in between her head and the wall.

He fucks her like eighteen year old Dick would have fucked her, hard and mean and when he finishes first he leaves her cold and messy and bruised in the hallway, the way he used to image it when she belonged to Cassidy and not him.

"What the hell is your problem?!" She yells storming after him.

"You know damn well know what my problem is!" He sends a fist into the wall. Logan's going to have his hide for that.

He looks down at her and she's standing there fucking shaking, her tights or nylons or whatever ripped up, her skirt is ripped and her button up wide open.

Her eyes are wide and her chest is heaving.

He runs a hand through his hair and sighs, "I love you Cindy but every time I think maybe were moving somewhat forward you just want to fuck instead."

"You what?"

"What what?"

"You love me?"

"Well yeah...duh."

She reaches forward and takes a hold of his hand and pulls him into the bedroom.

It's not exactly the progress he's hoping for but the sex is different.

It's like the first time. The very first time and when he calls her by her first name she smiles softly and kisses him.

He doesn't realise until after she leaves the next day that she didn't say it back.

But that doesn't mean she doesn't right.

* * *

He wants to take her out.

They've been together almost a whole solid year now.

There's an outdoor film festival doing those weird Italian films she likes and he's bought some of that weirdo soy ice cream stuff she likes.

"No thank you." Her tone is firm and her eyes are hard.

"Why not? You love that shit." He leans against the dinning room wall, arms crossed. He'd been sure she'd cave this time. It was basically their anniversary and after her last visit when he'd told her he loved her he assumed she'd be pretty malleable.

If anything she's harder.

She returns to her laptop like the conversation is over.

"I don't want to go out."

"More like you don't want to be seen with me." He sneers and his tone is dark and sharp and he hasn't used that tone in fucking years.

The last time he used it was against his father.

She looks up quickly eyes wide, "that's not...that's not true, we go out all the time!"

"In San Francisco."

He doesn't want to have this argument, he doesn't, he wants to be better than this but its sitting so heavily in the core of him.

"What's wrong with that? I don't come here to see anyone but you Dick. Why do we need to go out?"

Months and months of coming to visit him. Does she think he hasn't noticed that she brings a rental car when her's could easily make the trip, that he hasn't seen the huge starlet sunglasses she wears. Does she think she can distract him with sex forever?

He can't help the cruel laugh that pushes out of him,"After all these years you're still a fucking coward."

"What are you talking about?" She standing now, slamming the lid of her laptop closed.

He needs to stop.

He needs to back pedal and just pretend that everything is fine.

He needs to...

He just needs to say this or he'll die inside, "you're afraid to be seen with me."

She opens her mouth and nothing comes out. It shuts firmly and her eyes narrow, her hands ball into fists.

It's like a dam breaks in her.

"Do you know what they'll see Dick? Do you? They'll see us clinging to the memory of Cassidy, they'll see how horribly _sick_ and _damaged_ we are. How _sick_ and_ twisted_ I am for fucking the big brother. They'll see how_ fucking broken_ you are for fucking your dead brothers girlfriend."

"It was ten fucking years ago! You're not his girlfriend anymore Mac you're mine!" He yells out at her and she visibly flinches at the words.

"No." She looks right fucking through him, "no I'm not." She packs up her stuff and she's gone before he even has a chance to calm down.

* * *

Logan finds him on the couch eating ice cream out of the fucking carton and watching Buffy like a little bitch.

"What happened?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

Logan nods and disappears from the room.

There's an ache in his chest and his best friend has just abandoned him. God just let lightning strike or the couch come to life and hunger for Dick or something. He just wants to not exist.

Logan reappears with a spoon in his hand. He pushes Dick back so there's room for him on the couch and grabs a hold of the ice cream.

"So are you going to tell me all about your_ bay area baby_ now?" He asks a mouth full of ice cream.

Dick takes the container back. He can't see the harm now. She's never coming back and he doesn't even know if he wants her to if all she'll ever see is Cassidy.

"Mac." He grumbles stuffing a spoonful of the iced soy dessert he'd bought for her in his mouth.

Logan drops his soon into his lap, eyes wide.

"Mac thinks I'm a drama queen?!"

"If the tiara fits dude."

"Why didn't you just tell me man? Instead of making me play detective. I'm way out of practice."

He had wanted to tell him.

"I wanted to tell you."

"What happened?" His voice is soft and he seems to be valiantly ignoring the ice 'cream' in his lap.

"Remember when you asked if she was ashamed of me?" He's eyes are focused on the tv but all he can see is Mac and how hard her eyes had been and how completely done they were.

"Yeah..."

"Well I was tired of it being true."

"Dick..." Logan runs a hand through his hair and he can tell if they were different people they would be hugging this out.

But they aren't.

They are apparently 09er to the core because Logan stands up and looks down at him.

"Go get your passport. We are going to get drunk and laid and lose her entire months salary in a single game of craps."

"Monte Carlo again? I thought you were banned?" Dick asks standing from the couch and setting the ice cream on the coffee table. He's not sure he wants to go he just knows that if he doesn't get off that couch right now he'll switch to harder stuff than Buffy...like Gilmore girls...he might as well grow a fucking vagina.

"Ah yes." Logan smiles wrapping his arm around his shoulders, "Casino Christmas 2009...good times." He shrugs, "we'll think of something on the jet."

Logan squeezes his shoulder and he knows that they are never going to talk about it but if he wanted to Logan would be there. It was a nice consolation prize. Sure the girl he loved...loves had totally flaked on him, crushing pieces of his meticulously put together self. But he'd come back from that kind of place before. He'd been in the darkness before and managed to come out just fine. It certainly helped that Logan was on the other end making a rope out of fancy sheets.

* * *

**A/N:** Check out the last chapter tomorrow and see how I could possibly win back your love


	35. STAY

**STAY**

* * *

"I'm still mad at you." He hisses as he struggles with a coat arm that's trying to separate them.

"Uh huh." She mutters undoing his belt. The flask in the buckle smashes to the floor. Spilling a very fine scotch across the floor or the closet.

He's pushing her dress up with an urgency that just burns. So much for all that _totally over her_ bullshit he'd been telling himself.

He grabs her and pulls her up, she wraps her legs around his waist and he slams her too hard against the closet wall.

He puts his hand behind her head, "I'm serious Mac."

"Yeah well I'm still mad at you." She gasps out shifting so he can slide into her.

His breath shudders as he feels her around him again.

"Wait." He looks up at her squinting in the dark looking at her face, "why are_ you_ mad?_ you_ broke up with _me._"

He can feel the points of her heels drag up his legs and her chest heaves against his.

"We had a fight and when I went back to apologise you'd flown off to_ fucking Monte Carlo_ with Logan."

Her heels bite into his legs and he slams into her violently. Moving his hand from behind her head, "what the fuck are you talking about." He asks his breath rough cause fuck has she been doing yoga or something cause seriously he's positive she's tighter than before.

"I came back and just as I hit city limits I got photos of you enjoying a red-head on a pool table." She manages to get all the words out in an angry growl before a moan rips from her throat. She leans up against him throwing her weight onto him, her finger nails biting into his back, her teeth on the skin of his neck.

_Fuck._

_Logan sent her pictures._

_Fuck._

_She came back._

He wants to say something to her but every time he opens his mouth all that will come out are moans and gasps.

She seems to be similarly inflicted because she's moaning quietly in his ear and god its the best thing he's heard in a while.

* * *

He sets her down solidly, she leans against the wall and he can see her legs shake a little and he's a more than a little proud.

"You came back?"

Her gaze drops to the light up puddle of scotch on the floor.

"Yeah..."

"Why?" He's straightening his tie and doing up his belt because god he needs something to do with his hands because all they want to do is touch her.

"Because I love you." She mutters and he barely heard it but the words slam into him like a fucking freight train.

"You love me?"

She just nods.

"And you want to be with me?"

She nods again.

"It hurts...being with you...but its so much worse _not_ being with you." A half laugh escapes her pretty red mouth, "after all these years I guess you're still made out of Kryptonite." She reaches out and grabs a hold of his lapel, rubbing the fabric between her fingers. She tugs once ever so slightly forward and he moves easily, his hands on either side of her his mouth inches from hers.

She tilts up to take him but he moves back out of the reach of her mouth. She makes a frustrated noise in the back of her throat that he loves.

"Say it." He looks directly into her large blue eyes and can see that she's still broken somehow, after all this time she's carrying that damage around with her just like she didn't want to.

"I. Love. You." She reaches up between them and taps his nose and the flush on her face every time he tapped her nose makes so much more sense.

Had she been remembering what he had said to her every time he did that? When he called her pretty and instantly shifted their dynamic when he'd told her he loved her. In her mind had he been wordlessly telling her those things every time?

"That's not what I meant." He tells her but _god_ do her words fill him up.

Her eyes slowly close and her hands reach up under his jacket seeking out skin.

"Boyfriend." She tells him and the word is heavy.

"Who is?"

"You are." She's smirking and her eyes open again a dramatic roll to them, "you, Richard Casablancas Junior are my boyfriend and I love you."

He let's her kiss him.

* * *

He opens the door to his bedroom and Mac is sitting on the edge of it in her underwear and one of his t-shirts, arms crossed looking pissed.

_What?_

He closes the door tightly behind him. Why is she pissed? He'd left a note about going surfing. Was she pissed he'd stuck the post-it on her forehead? Nah he'd done that before without this kind of welcome.

He sets his beer down on the dresser by the door and leans on the door looking at her.

_God she's pretty._

"What?"

"Eager to please brunette?" She asks her tone sharp.

Fuck she heard that? It was just a joke on Ronnie.

"You heard that?" He opens a drawer in his dresser and sees that her stuff is still firmly in its new home. He let's out a breath.

This is new again, and he's worried it'll end as easily as it had started back up. If they were doomed to an endless cycle of loving each other and hurting each other.

She sighs heavily and he hears her move from the bed before she sees her hand on the drawer. She closes it.

"Just because I'm mad doesn't mean I'm leaving Dick."

"You sure?"

"Well I'm _eager to please_."

"Oh is that so?" He throws her carefully over his shoulder and takes her to the bed. He tosses her down and giggles burst out of her body and fill the room.

He wastes no time shedding the rest of his wet suit and pulling off her underwear.

He pauses before he enters her and she squirms impatiently under him.

"It's not always going to be like this right?"

"Like what?"

"Alone, hiding from the world? Because I can't take that again Cindy."

Her eyes soften and she licks her lips nervously, "I was going to wait to tell you..."

"Tell me what?"

God she's done with him again.

"I accepted a job offer at Kane Software...I'm moving back...I was thinking maybe I could stay here...with you and your husband..."

He's silent for a long moment and she looks up at him with wide scared eyes.

"I mean if you don't want me to...I...I can find an apartment."

He taps her on the nose and her face flushes, "Stay."

"Stay? You're sure? Don't you have to talk to Logan?"

"Stay." he tells her firmly and she nods a smile on her face that just warms all of him.

* * *

**A/N:** The End. So that was my somewhat cannon compliant story. I hope you enjoyed. I'm looking forward to switching this fic to completed. I so rarely get to do it. Thank you all for the kind words. I'm going to work on Electrify and Commitment Buffers now.


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